Flickr/ Garry Knight.Some rights reserved.
Over the past four or five weeks, it has become increasingly clear that the Labour selectorate will make Jeremy Corbyn the party’s leader. His rivals’ defeat at the polls, under the new regulations established by former leader Ed Miliband last year, seems all but certain.
Now, as anyone on the left knows, when establishments want to keep the status quo afloat, the electoral rules are often the first ballast over the side. Sometimes, this can take rather drastic forms. The ghost of Salvador Allende isn’t haunting the Labour Party, but its establishment candidates and figures frequently hint that they will question the legitimacy of Corbyn’s election, or even attempt to circumvent his election entirely. These unusual or extraordinary measures are justified, they say, by the “mortal danger” (Lord Mandelson) that Corbyn represents, which might lead to the party’s “annihilation” (Tony Blair). It is far from unusual for those in power – whether they are of the political right or the left - to try to change the rules of the game when there is a risk that the game might go against them, even in well-established democracies. François Mitterrand completely overhauled the French electoral system for the 1986 parliamentary elections in order to head off or at least attenuate an expected right-wing landslide. In Labour’s case, the challenge to the rules of the game is much easier; the regulations were only changed a year ago, and at the instance of a leader who subsequently lost a general election. It helps that many of Miliband’s critics also dislike Corbyn.
