THEY EMERGE ONE AFTER THE OTHER—THE anti-austerity parties, the purveyors of hope, the new or newly popular leaders and formations—from Greece to Spain to Ireland, from Turkey to Israel, from Burlington to Britain. They rally thousands, speak out for the dispossessed, challenge moribund elites; they are vilified as populist, deluded, dangerous; they win elections (Greece’s Syriza, Barcelona’s Mayor Ada Colau) or cross parliamentary thresholds (Israel’s Arab Joint List or Turkey’s HDP). They are in a sense successors to mass movements (Occupy, the indignados, Gezi Park, the Arab Spring). They glow for a short time on the bleak world stage; they are blocked, or fail, or fade, and new ones take their place.
Jeremy Corbyn puts his bid for the Labour Party leadership in that company. “There is some kind of…