Jeremy Corbyn is a leader transformed – but he still has a lot of work to do

While Labour is partying like it’s 1945, the long march of the British left is far from over

Corbyn has reason to be proud of his record, and Labour is proud again of its socialism (Reuters/Peter Nicholls)

“The World Transformed” was the name of the grassroots festival held this weekend alongside the Labour conference. It was run primarily by Momentum, the group that helped propel Jeremy Corbyn to power in his own party. The phrase also sums up what has happened to the wider scene in a tumultuous year.

A few months ago, Labour seemed set for terminal decline, and wasn’t short of people within its own ranks shouting as much. No longer. “We have left our divisions behind," Mr Corbyn told his followers, and it is certainly true that his critics – inside and outside his party – have been confounded and subdued, if not exactly silenced.

From the devastation in Dominica to beauty therapy training to climate change and a well-worded rebuke to Donald Trump, Mr Corbyn offered a prime-ministerial tour d’horizon. So confident is the Labour leader these days that he can even make a cheeky jibe about the editor of the Daily Mail, who many might consider to be the most feared man in Britain.

Natural, witty and relaxed, here is a leader transformed.

Mr Corbyn makes a bold boast. For he goes so far as to claim that his movement has shifted the centre of gravity of British politics to the left. It is hard to argue that he has not, though there are plenty of other factors at work. After all, even Theresa May’s Conservatives now pay lip service to dealing with corporate greed, workers’ rights and the struggles of the “just about managing”. Thatcherism is firmly out of fashion, in any party. “We are now the political mainstream,” Mr Corbyn declared, and on the “threshold of power”.

This sunny optimism from their leader was greeted with comradely rapture and communal chanting of his name: Brighton meets Glasto. Mr Corbyn finds himself at the centre of a cult of personality – whoever would have put Gordon Brown on a T-shirt? – and is enjoying the affection. He deserves to. Mr Corbyn has won seats previously thought unwinnable, resurrected socialism, and finessed, as best he can, his party’s stance on Brexit.

So Mr Corbyn has reason to be proud of his record, and Labour is proud again of its socialism. A world transformed indeed.

However, while Labour is partying like it’s 1945, the long march of the British left is far from over. First, despite all the stunning achievements, Labour did, after all, lose the election, and needs to gain about 60 seats more to form a majority government next time. Or, as Mr Corbyn put it, so very gently, “we didn’t do quite well enough”. That, we should recall, was against a useless campaigner in Theresa May, and the worst Tory campaign in living memory, a case study in how not to do politics. That may not happen again.

Labour is ahead in the polls – just – but that is not necessarily the same as being on the “threshold of power”, and, almost five years from the scheduled next election date, it really amounts to the opposite. For the further Labour pushes ahead in the polls, the less likely the Conservatives, chaotic as they are, are likely to vote down their own administration in a vote of confidence, or to volunteer a snap poll in the middle of Brexit. What’s more, the very tone and content of Labour’s newest policies – notably John McDonnell’s impassioned crusade to nationalise utilities and PFI contracts – will serve only to make the Conservatives more determined than ever to avoid another election and hand power to the socialists.

The Tories, as ever, may be counted on to do all in their power to cling on to office, with the help of their DUP allies. Belfast may yet enjoy more of the fruits of the money tree.

Still, accidents do happen, and Labour’s team may find themselves called on to govern in short order. The shadow cabinet is what one might call a “mixed ability” class. Some have gained stature since they received meteoric promotions and have proved creative and adept at dealing with the media; others aren’t even household names in their own kitchens; a few have proved occasionally disastrous. More importantly, the ever-more radical policies they are developing – what Mr Corbyn calls “socialism for the 21^st century” – could be difficult to sell to the public.

The fallacy that seems to be emerging in Corbynite circles after their election successes is that the more left wing a policy is, the more the public will like it – but that is hardly an iron rule of nature. They should bear in mind too that last time round many people who voted Labour didn’t actually think Mr Corbyn had any chance of winning power. Too much radicalism could easily find the voters scurrying away from Labour. Mr Corbyn is not one of the X-Men: he does not have a supernatural ability to move the centre ground of politics wherever he wishes.

Announced yesterday, the development land tax and a guarantee of an equivalent home for tenants dislodged by “redevelopment” schemes probably are winners, and examples of pragmatic measures to deal with the housing crisis that any sensible government could take; but the vast cumulative increase in public spending implied by some of Labour’s other policies is harder to justify. John McDonnell will need to do rather more than simply “war game” a run on sterling to convince the electorate that a Corbyn-led government would not follow the pattern of pre-Tony Blair era Labour governments, and run out of cash in a year or two, with strikes, inflation, unemployment and higher taxes (for the many) trashing the party’s reputation.

Depressingly, Mr Corbyn also said something that suggested that he has not yet “got” how the European Union works. “A Brexit that uses powers returned from Brussels to support a new industrial strategy to upgrade our economy in every region and nation” was his pledge – which is simply a Labour version of the “have cake and eat it” approach they castigate the Tories for pursuing. The sorts of government intervention Mr Corbyn favours – state industrial subsidies, soft loans, nationalisation, protectionist public procurement policies, an end to the “exploitative” free movement of labour – are incompatible with membership of the EU single market. He is deluding himself if he thinks Angela Merkel will nod that sort of thing through.

They may be disappointed by Theresa May, bored of Nigel Farage, and uninspired by Vince Cable, but the British people will not necessarily turn to Jeremy Corbyn and socialism for their salvation in a political world of kaleidoscopic change. The world hasn’t been transformed that much.