Who would have thought? Britain, of all places — that island so often lamented to be devoid of revolutionary history and thought, the land of Fabianism without Marxism, the home of Thatcher and Blair and the City — now has one of the most radical leaderships of any major social-democratic party in the advanced capitalist world.

The election of Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the British Labour Party is an expression of enormous discontent and anger at ever-worsening conditions since the crisis of 2008. Very few anticipated anything approaching Corbyn’s victory at the beginning of the race, not least Corbyn himself.

But now, with the benefit of hindsight, it is possible to identify the confluence of tendencies that led to this perfect storm in the summer of 2015 — and an analysis of the history of the Labour Party can illuminate situations and strategies for the British left in the coming years.