Eight months ago I wrote an article on Dissident Voice entitled “The Corbyn Effect: A British Democratic Revolution in the Making” in which I argued the case for my optimism as follows:
Jeremy Corbyn has transformed the Labour Party and politics in Britain. He has made it acceptable to be anti-austerity and to demand investments, not cuts, to revive the economy. He has articulated an alternative to neo-liberal economics, that has been the only game in town for so long. The Green Party has advocated such policies prior to the last general election, and I am delighted that, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, they are now Labour’s as well.
Huge numbers, young and old, have flocked (membership over half a million) to join the Party inspired by a man who has throughout his political career fought for the underdog. Yet, in the words of Andy Burnham, he has been treated appallingly by the parliamentary Labour Party…The people who are inspired by Jeremy Corbyn are not aliens from another solar system. They are ordinary people who are living through the insecurities that are blighting their lives. Young people crippled by debt, spending up to seventy percent of their wages paying rent to unscrupulous landlords for inadequate shelter; older people most in need of our NHS seeing it being starved of funds and being privatised by stealth.
Establishment politicians have failed to deliver for the ordinary voter. The Labour party led by a Blairite of a bygone age will be punished…