The Labour leadership result isn’t announced until 11.45am today. But whatever the result—and no one seems in much doubt what it will be, this contest has represented an intellectual surrender to Jeremy Corbyn and the ideology he represents.
Isabel Hardman and Marcus Roberts discuss Corbyn’s victory on Coffee House shots
I argue in The Sun this morning, that his opponents surrendered right at the start of the contest. Owen Smith was offered up as a more competent and media savvy leader rather than as the antidote to Corbynism.
Smith himself emphasised that the party owed Corbyn ‘a debt of gratitude for helping Labour rediscover its radical roots’. He stressed, ‘I am just as radical as Jeremy Corbyn’. Now, you can say that this was the best way to try and win over this particular selectorate. But it does mean that the Corbyn worldview has not been challenged in the way that it should have been.
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