The limited but deathless appeal of socialism

Jeremy Corbyn's Leadership Challenge And The Labour Party Implosion

Tim Worstall, a quondam UKIP candidate, says Labour has three factions, the Parliamentary folks who like winning elections and so reject socialism while embracing social liberalism, the leadership at lower levels and some members who still believe in and want actual socialism with their social liberalism, and the broad masses of working class types who reject both outright socialism and social liberalism.

Tony Blair, beloved of the first group and acceptable to the third, was and is loathed by the second.

Corbyn is perceived as one of the second group and it is generally expected that, if he is still the leader of the party at the next general election, Labour will be crushed as those broad working masses defect mostly to UKIP, since they are viscerally unable to vote for the Tories.

In other words, the rise in the influence of actual socialists in the Labour Party is its kiss of death.

That's how popular actual socialism is.

Unlikely leaders: Why Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn keep confounding elite experts

Paul Rosenberg takes a rather different view.

Supporting both Corbyn and Sanders and viewing Blair and Clinton somewhat disdainfully as "pragmatists," he subscribes to the delusion that the they represent democracy and the people.

But if the Labor Party leader were chosen by Labor voters in actual primaries Corbyn would be out, just like Bernie.

But the Labor Party does not choose its leader in any such democratic fashion, so Corbyn doesn't actually have to answer even to the leftish portion of the British people who vote Labour.