This Is What Jeremy Corbyn’s New Labour Coalition Looks Like [View all]

http://www.thenation.com/article/this-is-what-jeremy-corbyns-new-labour-coalition-looks-like/

Even if it fails, the insurgency may have permanently altered Labour’s political dynamics. Even if a new generation of Cold War bruisers from the trade-union right could be assembled to suppress the left, even if a generation of bright neoliberals could be found to replace the dull ones, the UK establishment would still tell itself: This is a party of which we once lost control.

If it does survive it will be because of the youngsters in hi-vis vests. At every Corbyn rally they are there—students, ex-students, young union organizers, veterans of the eco-movement and Occupy. They are quickly populating the TV studios as broadcasters hunt for Labour pundits who actually support Corbyn.

This is a generation for whom political studies means reading Foucault, not the biographies of prime ministers or handbooks of parliamentary procedure. Few have any desire to become the new MPs, spin-doctors and strategists Corbyn needs. And the man himself is happier on a demo than in the House of Commons.

So Corbynism, while it lasts, will be a form of anti-politics. Though it has brought traditional social democrats close to despair there is a method in it.

The only thing that could reunite the lost tribes of Labour—the white workers, the salariat, the Scots and the Greens—is the radical rejection of everything that the party, and the political system, has become. The question is, can he achieve that while maintaining the loyalty of Labour’s centrist voters, quelling the Blairite revolt, and avoiding presentational catastrophe?