Jeremy Corbyn's sweeping victory in the Labour leadership contest has launched his party into uncharted waters and has the potential to transform British politics. If the outcome was expected, the scale of Mr Corbyn's triumph was astonishing, with almost 60 per cent of votes cast. It was also more broadly based than expected, with the veteran left-wing MP winning by wide margins among all three categories of voters – full party members, trade union affiliate members and "registered supporters" who paid £3 to vote in the election.
The clarity and decisiveness of the election outcome has, for the moment, snuffed out the hopes of Mr Corbyn’s many detractors withing the parliamentary Labour party that he could be toppled within months to make way for a leader they view as more electable. It will do little, however, to reconcile the conflict between his overwhelming democratic mandate from the party membership, and the fact that he enjoys the support of only a handful of his MPs. And the new Labour leader can expect an unrelenting onslaught on his personality and his policies from an almost universally hostile British media.
Part of Mr Corbyn's appeal lies in his perceived authenticity as a true believer who speaks his mind but his success must also be seen in the context of the crisis in social democracy across the developed world and the rise in economic populism in Europe and the United States. In some European countries, the beneficiaries have been parties of the far right, in others it has been far-left parties such as Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain.
Until now, the most successful populists in Britain have been the right-wing Eurosceptic of the United Kingdom Independence Party (Ukip) and the nationalists of the Scottish National Party (SNP), who fought this year's election on a platform to the left of Labour's. Mr Corbyn hopes that, by shifting his party to the left, he can win power by reclaiming votes from the Greens, the SNP and even Ukip (whose supporters appear to like him) and mobilising young voters who usually don't turn out at elections.
Opinion polls suggest this may be wishful thinking and that voters rejected Labour in May chiefly because they didn’t trust the party on the economy and they didn’t like its leader. Mr Corbyn has long favoured Britain’s withdrawal from Nato and has sent mixed signals on the country’s EU membership. Any attempt to make withdrawing from Nato or the EU Labour policy could precipitate a split that would cement Conservative domination of British politics for many years.
David Cameron and George Osborne see Mr Corbyn’s victory as an historic opportunity for the Conservatives to colonise the centre ground in politics. The new Labour leader must act with wisdom and restraint if he is to prove them wrong.