Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn visits Whittington hospital. Photo: Stefan Rousseau / PA Archive/Press Association Images. All rights reserved.Whatever happens this summer, Jeremy Corbyn leaves a major legacy. Most notable is the longterm leftwards shift in Labour’s centre of gravity. The party’s right in retreat, Corbyn’s challenger Owen Smith campaigns on an almost identical platform, Trident and the EU aside. Smith’s pitch is to present it better and add much-need policy heft. The course steered may need a new captain, but politically Corbyn binds Labour left for the foreseeable future.
But Corbynism has changed things elsewhere too, and in the most unexpected of quarters. Indeed, the Corbyn Effect may win the next general election. The only thing is, under Corbyn, it won’t be Labour cracking open the champagne. Margaret Thatcher famously named New Labour her greatest achievement. Corbyn’s may transpire to be the caring, sharing ‘New Tories’.
New Labour hatched under Thatcher’s watch, her hegemonic project remoulding 'common sense' in the eighties. But the New Tories sprung when Corbyn’s back was turned. Labour abandoned the business of being an alternative government. Opportunistically, Tories clothed themselves in the garb Labour shed. Their new One Nation Milibandism could be a potent electoral proposition from the natural party of parliamentary rule. And letting the Tories tack left makes a Labour win less likely when one is sorely needed to turn the big, bad Brexit ship of fools back to land.
