Corbyn is chiming with the times. But no one can predict anything any more
... even though the Corbyn effect was big, it did not explain everything that happened in the election. In many places, this was a collective and collegiate surge, authored by people inside and outside the party. Labour has a specific and long-standing identity in Wales, which was used to see off the Tory threat in fine style. The same applied in Greater Manchester. As exemplified by what happened in Brighton and Norwich, Labour did well in many places thanks to votes borrowed from the Greens and Lib Dems, whose supporters gladly switched despite the fact the Labour leadership wanted nothing to do with the politics of the so-called progressive alliance. There may have been even more gains if the party had toned down some of its old-school tribalism.
There were also limits to the surge that, as the euphoria subsides, Labour needs to think about. In Scotland, the party put on fewer than 10,000 votes. Despite the “dementia tax”, the Conservative lead among people over 70 was estimated to be 50 percentage points. And the syndrome whereby former Labour voters went first to Ukip and then the Tories was real and widespread – as evidenced by a handful of Labour losses in the Midlands, and other places where the Tory vote went up thanks to voters supposedly at the sharp end of austerity. ... Looking ahead, one thing above all others is likely to underline the complexities of Labour’s position: Brexit, parked as an issue during the election, to the party’s great benefit, but inevitably set to come roaring back.
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Corbyn’s advance, I have heard lately, is proof of the demise of the politics minted by New Labour and Bill Clinton’s Democrats, and “the end of centrism”. Maybe that’s true; given that this approach had no answers to the huge issues crystallised by the crash of 2008 and a whole set of questions around deepening inequality, that would not be a bad thing. But I suspect that 21st-century politics is much more uncertain, and the way that Corbyn went from zero to hero within weeks is further proof of how politics flips around in a world beyond tribal loyalty, and the quicksilver reality in which we find ourselves.
Events of all kinds now seem to move at light speed. And look at how wildly the political pendulum swings: from Obama to Trump; from the SNP triumphant to Nicola Sturgeon in sudden abeyance; from Europe supposedly in hopeless crisis to the twin leadership of Macron and Merkel; and from the Brexit victory to the glorious shocks and surprises of last week.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/17/corbyn-chiming-with-times-jubilant-insurgent-labour
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