Jeremy Corbyn's Victory

I shall have more to say about Jeremy Corbyn's victory in my Mail on Sunday column tomorrow, and have recently written at length about him here :

http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/09/my-evening-with-jeremy-corbyn.html

..but, very briefly on a busy day, I would say here that I see this moment as a victory of adversarial, adult politics over bland, public relations pseudo-politics and the ghastly, meaningless and closed-minded concept of the 'centre', a claim by a narrow political viewpoint to be somehow blessed with moderation, modernity and common sense, when its only real strength is to be in fashion with conventional wisdom.

 

This is not because I agree with Mr Corbyn about much (though I do agree with him about some things, notably railway nationalisation and several foreign policy issues) . One of the things that is wrong with him is that he shares far too many polices with David Cameron, and isn't anything like radical enough for me on the European Union, where he is disappointingly conventional, unlike his one-time ally, Tony Benn .

It often puzzles me that the Labour Left have mysteriously abandoned Tony Benn's consistent and indispensable opposition to the EU, while continuing to revere him. 

The right people have been discomfited. That does not, alas, mean that we are on the road to any real change in national politics.