Why are we surprised by Corbyn's popularity?

It is interesting to see the huge convulsion that Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘charge’ has caused both inside politics and in the media. There seem to be four explanations for the phenomenon. First, The right wing press assume that it is the ‘true’ heart of Labour being revealed after many years of Blairism. In other words, since the early 1990s Labour has only been pretending to be a centrist party. The left, lurking in the unions, in dark corners of urban local government and at the universities, has used the opportunity of Labour’s defeat to reveal itself. This chimes with their obsession with ‘entryism’. Second, the more thoughtful elements in the media, such as Andrew Rawnsley in his excellent article in today’s (August2) Observer, point out that Labour has always been a divided party, between the Blairite centre and the left. The Blairites are perceived to have lost and so party members want the left to have a go. The same happens with the Conservatives. Whenever they lose an election, their right wing gains the ascendancy (look at Howard’s brief leadership). There is a third explanation which comes from the left itself. This suggests that a large proportion of the country is effectively unrepresented when Labour takes up a centrist position. These are union members in traditional industries, people on low paid jobs who have to rely on benefits and the young who see their opportunities to be limited. The prospect of massive postgraduate debt, poor job opportunities and unaffordable housing, inevitable drives this last group into the arms of the left. This group must have been dismayed to hear Labour’s leaders accepting welfare benefit caps, high tuition fees, lukewarm policies on jobs for the young and very modest house building ambitions. In Scotland they had somewhere to go – the SNP - but no such luck in England. Small wonder they are flocking (sorry to use an animal based verb, I hear they are no longer pc) to the Corbyn camp. A fourth explanation comes from all quarters and is that Corbyn is authentic, is principled and says what he believes, while other politicians say what they think the centre ground of the electorate want to hear. Of course Labour used to have such a candidate, but he has, for whatever reason, ruled himself out. That is Alan Johnson. The doom mongers on the left are probably right. Labour cannot win another election for some time to come but it won’t be Corbyn’s fault, it will be caused by the absurd electoral system we use and the paucity of suitable, dominant and charismatic figures from the centre of the party. Even if David Miliband does ride over the horizon to try to pick up the pieces in two or three years time, the damage done to Labour may well be unrepairable. The centre left in British politics is fragmented and the centre right is not. There is no getting away from that. For those who take up a centrist position on politics, there is one crumb of comfort. Now that the Conservatives look set for a long period in power, they are showing every signs of avoiding a lurch to the right, so whether we have a Cameron/Osborne government in the years to come (which now looks a certainty), or a Cooper/Burnham one (which looks very unlikely), most people will not be able to tell the difference. It is the Corbyn constituency that needs to worry.