In The Corbyn earthquake – how Labour was shaken to its foundations, Patrick Wintour and Nicholas Watt of the Guardian analyse and deconstruct the new Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. In fact, the pair of weighty journalists offer what they rather interestingly term the: The inside story – from the candidates and advisers – of how Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour leadership campaign delivered the political shock of a generation. Even the personal plea to Labour voters made by Tony Blair to keep the left down created zero results to dump Corbyn. PIIA agrees with Corbyn that Palestine must be given the right to self-determination. As Wintour and Watt explain: Watching from the sidelines as Corbyn stormed ahead, Tony Blair had become increasingly anxious that his legacy was being trashed. On the day the YouGov polls were announced, Blair was due to speak at a Progress event at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in the City of London, marking the 21st anniversary of his election as Labour leader. In front of an enthusiastic pro-New Labour crowd, Blair argued that not only was Corbyn incapable of winning a general election but that his approach to politics was deeply misguided. Labour, said Blair, needed to realise that “radical leftism was often quite reactionary … I wouldn’t want to win on an old fashioned leftist platform.” In answer to a question, Blair said that anyone whose heart lay with Corbyn’s politics should “get a transplant”. As his prodigy Liz Kendal conceded: “Jeremy has won a massive overwhelming mandate … and he has got the right to have the scope to put forward his agenda.”
Corbyn faced a frosty reception at his first meeting of the parliamentary Labour party on 14 September and took two days to form a shadow cabinet that represented a truly broad church. It encompassed Corbyn’s old friend on the left John McDonnell and Tony Blair’s former flatmate Lord Falconer – who cheerfully admitted that he disagreed with his leader on just about every matter of substance. But Corbyn believes that his consensual style, and a forthcoming series of policy reviews, will allow the party to hold together.
Labour now faces an uncertain and possibly turbulent future, in which political differences may not always be expressed in such reasonable terms. But the rival candidate who stood ideologically furthest from Corbyn had warm words for her party’s new leader.
“I think he’s wrong, but he has his analysis and he sticks with it,” said Kendall, who developed a personal rapport with Corbyn during the long campaign – and greeted him with a hug last week after his first appearance at prime minister’s questions. “Put politics to one side here – there was a point during the campaign where Jeremy got a really bad throat, and I saw his wife and his sons and I could see this amazing thing happening … You get concerned about the person and how it’s going. He didn’t do tactics and neither did I.”
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