Owen Jones never has had it so good. Jones is positively frothing at the mouth at seeing the possibility of his side of the Labour Party become ‘mainstream’. For those who support Jeremy Corbyn, they point out that Corbyn is not attempting to send us back to the 1980s, but further back to tap into the spirit of 45. This comparison is significant in more ways than one, as Corbyn will need a significant average national swing to see Labour come into Government. This is no time for hyperbole, but the swing probably would have to be as significant as the one which saw Clement Attlee win in 1945, Ted Heath in 1970 or Tony Blair in 1997. That’s not the say that it cannot be done, and indeed the Corbyn camp place much emphasis on hope and vision – but it is a tall order. In terms of change, it is radical rather than incremental; and yet the overall approach of Labour as regards its next leader has generally been ‘one last push’. The ‘big guns’ have invariably come out for anyone but Corbyn, but this seems to be consolidating the vote merely for Jeremy Corbyn. One has to wonder what the first 100 days of a Government from Jeremy Corbyn would look like, akin to the first 100 days of a Harold Wilson government in 1964, and one suspects the pattern would be rumblings about leaving Europe, people’s QE, some sketchy housing policies, more people’s QE, lack of progress on international tax avoidance crackdown attempts, more people’s QE, as Carl Gardner recently mooted. It’s hard to see who is going to play Geoffrey Howe or Nigel Lawson to Jeremy Corbyn, but whoever it is would have to have a good working knowledge of how people’s QE might work. And presumably Richard Murphy and Danny Blanchflower aren’t down to win some significant by-elections shortly.

All is clearly not at ease in Jeremy Corbyn’s foreign policy, but the idea of talking to your enemies to make progress is one some can relate to. It’s hard to say what the impact of allegations of Corbyn being anti-semitic might be. It is unclear whether Sun readers will be shocked that Corbyn allegedly said it was a ‘tragedy’ that Osama Bin Laden was nearly or completely assassinated, for example. I am unclear who would wish to serve as Corbyn’s shadow foreign secretary, but I do know it won’t be Douglas Alexander. The rout in Scotland is clearly relevant to the future success of Labour, and many in Labour will wish Corbyn to be successful there. Part of the reason lies in whether the attraction of the SNP is a protest against neoliberalism from Westminster or a strong nationalist fervour. Scotland did choose in its last referendum to stay in the Union, and the allegiance of the SNP in previous years has been suspect (they voted with the Conservative Party to win by one vote the vote of ‘no confidence’ in the 1979 Jim Callaghan government). In many ways, the actual proof of the pudding in implemented policy from the SNP has been right wing. SNP might have benefited from a progressively impotent Labour opposition. The SNP currently are acting as a protest party whilst in Government. It’s unclear whether Corbyn can convert his packed town halls into real votes in Scotland, as it is in UKIP-land wherever that is. But it is the pitch to ‘middle England’ which is the big one.

We are living in a very different political universe in England say compared to forty years ago. Whilst it might be argued that 40 years ago it was the Unions that could ‘hold the country to ransom’, it is now the City of London. Blair did not reverse significantly the anti-union trade union legislation. Indeed, the Unions have argued that some legislation from the Blair régime actually benefited the Unions, such as the Freedom of Information Act, which has much of its roots in previous Liberal MPs such as Clement Freud. Whatever one’s opinions about whether the spending in the 2000s made the City less resilient to withstand international headwinds, there’s a robust argument that the light touch regulation of the City from Labour’s intensely relaxed prawn cocktail offensive was too light touch. Osborne agreed with this policy. And Osborne agreed with the extent of public spending at the time. Labour has argued in places that it does not regret this public spending in schools and hospitals. Andy Burnham, one of the Labour leadership candidates, has argued that he doesn’t regret ‘mending the roof while the sun was shining’, except the PFI loan repayments in the NHS have helped to cripple the NHS financially. It is the same Burnham who does not want to be seen as intensely relaxed on welfare benefits spending, whereas Corbyn’s alternative message gets traction. That there is an alternative to ‘there is no alternative’ turns Hayek and his followers (like Sir Keith Joseph and ‘Selsdon Man’) on their heads. The ‘Road to Serfdom’ presents a narrative where economic markets can free the citizen, but the modern interpretation is that in many cases the economic markets have imposed unconscionable fetters. It is this lust for austerity that has seen the £20bn McKinsey efficiency savings relatively unquestioned, while Sadiq Khan MP, current candidate to be Labour’s candidate for London Mayor, said in opposition he would be unable to reverse the devastating cuts in legal aid pursuant to the Legal aid and sentencing of offenders act (2012). And yet somehow there’s always money for war in Iraq or Afghanistan, or to spend in HS2; fairly typical Bennite arguments, and now taken up by Jeremy Corbyn.

At 68, Jeremy Corbyn is no spring chicken; and at 72 if elected as PM he would be joining the Ken Clarke club. I have no feel for whether the electorate is actually quite ageist in choosing its PM. There’s a general feeling that senior MPs used to be a lot older once, and with this age comes experience. Harold Wilson said famously of Tony Benn that ‘the problem with Tony is that he immatures with age’, and to be fair to Corbyn he has moved with the times, in presenting an anti-austerity message which is a textbook left populist message from Europe, wants to tackle the obvious social housing crisis, and wants to review Trident spending. There’s the classic argument that Trident will be ineffective against the suicide bomber in Baghdad and all the rest of it, but it is currently unclear what the Corbyn pitch on NATO exactly is. It is possible to be internationalist without being pro-European, which in fact describes Nigel Farage’s position well. Hugh Gaitskell was that too, much to the disdain of the late Roy Jenkins. But this is worth bearing in mind, whether Corbyn feels that the social protections offered by the European Union are inadequate compared to the abuse which can come from the free movement of capital and labour of the European Union. Leaving Europe might provide a reason to pull up the drawbridge a bit, while conceding that there are parts of the UK which benefit from foreign skills. It might lessen the threat of people from elsewhere employed by multinationals being able to undercut people born and bred in the UK. The origin of the leaving Europe argument as articulated by Tony Benn has less of a xenophobic twang as, arguably, Enoch Powell’s. For Benn, the heart of the problem lies in a fault in democracy, akin to the Daily Mail’s meme as railing against foreign judges in Strasbourg.

I’m a socialist, and I don’t think a Jeremy Corbyn only offering will work. But I don’t think any of the other candidates offer the full package either. The Labour leadership contest has felt like a tug of war between Blairites and non-Blairites, but if Jeremy Corbyn does happen to screw up (and I don’t want to instil fear not hope) it could set back the left’s mission by a very long time. Then Owen Jones won’t be laughing. The sacrificial lamb in the broad Church that is Labour could be none other than Jeremy Corbyn, not the so-called Blairites. I think it’s fair to say that the odds are immensely stacked against Jeremy Corbyn. Polls have been massively wrong before, and as we opine Andy Burnham or Yvette Cooper could be secretly ‘clearing up’. I don’t feel Liz Kendall, representing the Blairite arm (but refusing to be seen as the Blairite candidate), has been fairly represented, in that I don’t feel that she is as ‘right wing’ as all that. I don’t think the Conservative Party will be ‘rubbing their hands in glee’, but I don’t think either they would be terrified if Jeremy Corbyn won the UK Labour leadership contest. But I do feel Harold Wilson is right in his meme ‘the Labour Party is nothing if does not have a moral crusade’, and indeed, in keeping with Hugh Gaitskell, there is a strong sense of morality which pervades much of Labour’s thinking, such as campaigning against unfairness and injustices in employment rights or disability wellbeing. It might be that the perception of three of the four candidates is that they are seen as too keen on ‘fiscal responsibility’, and one of them is too keen on the moral dimension (and Corbynomics). I think Labour, whoever wins this forthcoming leadership election, will find itself in a strange position of triangulating between the different parts of its Coalition in a way which might make previous factional fighting look like mere tiffs.