Political revolution creeps up quietly on British voters

That's all changed.

As Labour politicians jostled for the position of leader in the wake of Miliband's abrupt departure, the party became embroiled in a furious public row over why it lost so disastrously in May, and what its future policy should be.

Three protagonists emerged, labelled by many commentators as the best of a lackluster bunch. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall were already trying to figure out what policies would bring them success in the leadership bid when the fat was truly thrown on the fire.

Labour members of parliament, eager to enliven the debate and make it more interesting, gave left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn enough votes to allow him to stand as an official candidate. They, and many others in the party, assumed that Corbyn wouldn't stand a chance, because his extreme left wing views wouldn't sit well with the bulk of the members.

They got that one wrong. Corbyn has attracted the support of four powerful trade unions, all of which are urging their members to elect him as leader in September. He has been consistently ahead in opinion polls conducted within the party, and his rise has left fellow candidates scrambling to embrace policies they think will beat him.

Many commentators now assume Corbyn, who has never occupied an official position in over 40 years as a politician, could well win, becoming the leader of the Opposition.

That, they say, means the Labour Party will become pretty much unelectable in the polls for as long as 10 years because the British electorate simply doesn't embrace extreme policies and politicians any more.

So Corbyn's chances of becoming prime minister are, realistically, very remote indeed. But if that ever happened, you could expect a British withdrawal from NATO, a scrapping of Britain's nuclear deterrent, a surge in trade union influence, and possibly, just possibly, moves to transform Britain into a republic - Corbyn is known as a staunch anti-monarchist.

There's an old saying that a British government is only as good as its opposition - and with Labour beating itself to death, the Liberal Democrats reduced to a shadow of their former selves, and the resurgence of the SNP, there are stormy seas ahead.

The author is managing editor of China Daily Europe. chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com

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