On the morning of 12 September at the QEII Centre in Westminster, Jeremy Corbyn will be declared the new leader of the Labour Party. This is the outcome that almost all MPs now expect. A result that scriptwriters would have rejected as too outlandish before the contest began is regarded as near inevitable. Given the number of ballots returned in the first week of voting, the game may already be over. “It’s like a bad dream” and “It’s like a bad film”, shadow cabinet ministers told me.
All sides are struggling to adapt to the strange new world in which Corbyn – lifelong backbencher, serial rebel – becomes leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition. When his candidacy was announced in four short paragraphs in his local paper, the Islington Tribune, on 3 June, most believed that he would struggle to avoid finishing last. No one believed that he would reduce two former cabinet ministers, Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper, to an unseemly squabble over which of them is in second place.
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