The Overton Window is a concept beloved particularly by the Left. It’s a theory about the range of political ideas that the public will accept, and the reason the Left has been particularly interested in this window in recent years is that there is a belief you can move it in a certain direction so that previously radical and frightening ideas become quite normal.
Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters certainly believe that their party has succeeded in moving the Overton Window over the past few years, and that the old political adages about the public not wanting an overly left-wing party no longer apply. But within the party itself, there has also been a rather interesting movement of windows.
Over the past decade or so, the trade unions have often been portrayed as the left-wing weight holding the Labour Party down.
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