In Australia we've had our fair share of "unelectable" politicians get elected. As has Britain.
At the moment the British Labour Party is in the process of electing a new opposition leader following their thrashing at the general election in May. Under the party's new rules, Labour's 232 MPs each get one vote to cast for the leader as do the party's 299,755 members, together with 189,703 trade unionists who are members of a union affiliated with the Labour Party, and as do 121,295 members of the general public who are not party members but who've paid £3 and registered themselves as Labour "supporters".
The process was intended to bring democracy to the Labour Party — but the problem with democracy is that sometimes it gets out of hand. There's accusations that "entryists" have infiltrated the party. A Tory MP had registered as a Labour supporter so that he could vote for the Labour leader.
OVERWHELMING FAVOURITE CORBYN
According to the polls the overwhelming favourite to win the election for leader is Jeremy Corbyn. Until a few weeks ago no-one had heard of the thrice-married, 66 year-old who has spent the last 32 years in obscurity on the backbench. To describe him merely as "left-wing" doesn't do justice to his policies on everything from economics to terrorism. He supports printing money to defeat "austerity", wants to nationalise energy companies, and he advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament. He once described representatives of the terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as "our friends".
Corbyn would be a disaster for the Labour Party — and if heaven-forbid he ever became prime minister, he'd be a disaster for the country. Which is why Tony Blair and practically every senior and serious Labour leader have urged the party to pick anyone but Corbyn. On all the evidence Corbyn is unelectable. Yet the slight nagging worry of the British ruling class is that he might not be. And there's a precedent.
There once was a candidate for their party's leadership who was similarly described as unelectable — who was "extremist" and "class-conscious" — and who would shift their party from the "middle ground" and consign it to electoral oblivion. The Economist magazine said of the leadership aspirant that they were "precisely the sort of candidate ... who ought to be able to stand, and lose, harmlessly".
That candidate, of course, was Margaret Thatcher, and the year was 1975.
Gordon Brown, the former Labour Chancellor of the Exchequer and Prime Minister delivered a speech this week urging Labour party members to be sensible. He pleaded with them to remember their party had to be "credible" and "electable". Brown was mystified that someone could vote for a leadership candidate in the full knowledge that the person they're voting for would probably never win a general election. A similar critique of Corbyn's supporters has been extended to Corbyn himself. He's suspected of being more interested in propagating his political philosophy than in becoming prime minister.
According to Brown it's "not an abandonment of principles to seek power" and power "is necessary to change lives". Brown is right, but he's wrong to have convinced himself that only party politics changes lives. As wrong and as misguided as Corbyn and his supporters are, they may just have a more sophisticated appreciation of power than Brown.
MORE POWER THAN POLITICS
The Chief Justice of the High Court, the Governor of the Reserve Bank — even the Managing Director of the ABC and the President of the Australian Human Rights Commission have far more power over people's lives than your average minister or even average prime minister. Admittedly judges, regulators, bosses of state-owned media companies, and human rights bureaucrats are all appointed by politicians but none of them are actually politicians. The insight that politics is practised in many ways, and not just through the formal political process was appreciated by the Italian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci, when in the 1920s he talked of the left gaining power via "the long march through the institutions".
If power and the ability influence the public debate is measured in decades rather than in the weeks of parliamentary sitting terms, by the publicity he's received for his views Corbyn has already fundamentally changed British politics.
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