The Electable Jeremy Corbyn
Critics say history shows Jeremy Corbyn is too left-wing to be elected prime minister. Here's why they're wrong.
Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable. We know this because the ideas he espouses were emphatically rejected in the 1983 British general election. His youthful supporters are ignorant of history. Labour will be obliterated if it moves left, just like 1983. It will be an act of political suicide, just like 1983. It will be an apocalypse, there will be fire and brimstone, humans will be wiped out, and the world itself will explode — just like 1983.
That’s a précis of every anti-Corbyn op-ed and every has-been politician’s warning, repeated over and over again from the moment opinion polls signaled that something was going on in the Labour leadership contest.
The Falklands Factor
But Labour didn’t lose in 1983 because it was too left wing; rather, Thatcher won because of the Falklands War. The “Falklands factor” could not be clearer from opinion polls. Prior to the war of April–June 1982, the Conservative Party was slumped at a consistent 27 percent throughout late 1981, with a slight recovery in early 1982.
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