It's so strange the way he's talking

I think I should record the fact that I'm really, really enjoying the Labour Party leadership election.

Which is a bit odd. Because so far there has been not a single memorable moment, and because the candidates are so poor. I've written elsewhere about the best slate of candidates in a Labour leadership election, but this is surely the worst; there was more talent on display in 2007, and there was only one name on the ballot paper then.

But the whole thing's been transformed by the arrival in the spotlight - reluctant, blinking, bewildered - of Jeremy Corbyn, the longest serving member of the Left's chorus-line. Unheralded by the critics, never even an understudy, he's somehow turned a school nativity play into a hit show.

Or, more accurately, into part of a hit series, one more episode in a longer running story about the public's dislike of the political establishment.

If we were to date the start of this story, I think we'd go back to the elections of Martin Bell in 1997 and of Richard Taylor in 2001 as independent MPs. Bell was ably assisted by the Labour machine, so perhaps he doesn't really count, but certainly Taylor - who took the safe Wyre Forest seat from Labour on a Health Concern ticket - was a shot across the bows of the establishment. As I wrote in A Classless Society: 'At a time when political parties were losing support at an unprecedented rate, they could not afford to ignore the spectacular success of a genuine independent.'

Then there was the election of Respect's George Galloway as the member for Bethnal Green and Bow in 2005 and Bradford West in 2012. This year, of course, Galloway emulated Shirley Williams's unenviable record of losing a seat at two successive general elections, but meanwhile the Scottish National Party was gleefully sweeping the board in Westminster.

In between, there was the brief flurry of Clegg-mania in 2010 and, more significantly, the spectacular rise of Ukip. It may only have one MP, but the vote Ukip achieved in the general election was substantial: 3.9 million people turned out to support the party, more than the Liberal Democrats and the SNP put together. I think it's reasonable to point out that many of those people were voting in anger at the failings of the other parties, rather than to express their total support for Ukip's platform.

And now we have the Corbyn insurgency. Napoleon once said that every corporal carried a field-marshal's baton in his knapsack, but no one realised that his comments should be taken literally.

Every one of these developments since Wyre Forest seems to have come as a complete shock to the Westminster commentators. And partly this is because the new political class and the media have become as one.

There's always been an overlap between politics and media, but since the 1990s it has reached absurd proportions. Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, Ed Balls, Yvette Cooper - all of them journalists or ex-journalists. It feels as though the two groups have interbred to the point of imbecility, and are now apparently unaware of anything happening outside the Strangers' Bar and a handful of decent restaurants within earshot of the division bell.

With some honourable (sometimes very honourable) exceptions, political commentary has descended into a kiddies' Kremlinology, with little titbits about whether George Osborne has the tactical upper-hand over Theresa May in the race for the Tory succession.

The Blairite-Brownite saga was the model, a dispute that was rooted entirely in ego. 'There is but a cigarette paper between the politics of Brown and Blair,' Polly Toynbee wrote in 1996, but 'most of politics is far more about personal rivalry, jealousy and suspicion than usually gets reported.' Now that's pretty much all that gets reported.

And then, from time to time, the cosy consensus is disrupted by the public demanding that their voice be heard as well. And those interruptions to business seem to be turning up with every greater frequency.

So we have the hugely entertaining spectacle of columnists trying to work out why anyone would take Corbyn seriously. He's not part of the inner circles. He's not a player. He is, on the other hand, a man who's been on virtually every demonstration for the last thirty-five years (or on the counter-demonstration if the original one wasn't appropriate). He may not have figured in the media very much, but his long service is known and admired by a great many of those who will vote in the leadership election.

Corbyn represents the outsider at a time when insiders are deeply unpopular. A vote for him is a vote against the establishment (however loosely or widely that is defined). Just for the record, I still don't think he's going to win the leadership, but then the SNP didn't win the independence referendum last year and it didn't seem to do them much harm.

And talking of referendums, that's the next episode waiting to be written in the story of Britain's disillusionment with Westminster. At some point in the next two years (sooner rather than later, if the reports are to be believed), the political class is going to have to put itself up for approval by the population of the country. The ostensible issue is our membership of the European Union, but it'll be surprising if that's the sole item on the agenda.

Now that one's going to be really enjoyable.

Yesterday's News Today: Ed Miliband in 2010

I was looking through some old newspapers yesterday, and stumbled across the Guardian's coverage of Ed Miliband's debut as Labour leader in 2010.

You'll remember that Miliband was elected at the start of the conference week that September, and that a couple of days later he made his first big speech in his new role. The paper invited various figures to comment on the speech:

Tony Benn: 'I supported him for leader, and he's justified my every hope.'

Roy Hattersley: 'Ed Miliband made the speech which, for years, I have wanted a Labour leader to make.'

Jenni Russell: 'The party has chosen the right man. David Miliband could not have spoken like this.'

Seumas Milne: 'This is a long way ahead of Brown, let alone Blair. It also reflects the mainstream centre of public opinion.'

Polly Toynbee: 'Here was a fresh tone of honesty and authenticity ... This was grownup politics.'

Derek Simpson: 'His clear support for the vital role of trade unions is welcome. It has been too long since we heard a Labour leader speak in those terms.'

Anne Perkins: 'warm words, priorities that any progressive would welcome, and no convincing narrative to show what he wanted to do with them.'

Norman Tebbit: 'He had been well rubbed down with snake oil.'

Martin Kettle: 'a political ecumenism which indicates that Miliband's Labour would be seriously open to a centre-left coalition if and when the chance comes.'

Elsewhere, the Independent ran a similar, though less impressive, feature, with comments from Jim Murphy: 'He ensured Labour would remain in the mainstream... He is a serious, deep politician.' And from Dave Prentis: 'These first steps towards refreshing the party are a giant leap towards reconnecting with voters.'

To add to the picture, here's Kevin Maguire in the Daily Mirror: 'His freshness allowed him to pose as the optimist without appearing to be silly.' While the Sun reported Ken Livingstone: 'It was excellent. The only leader's speech in thirty years when I've agreed with every word.'

And some other newspaper comment. The Daily Telegraph leader concluded: 'Labour may yet rue the day they picked the younger Miliband.'

Daniel Finkelstein wrote in The Times: 'The more this week that Mr Miliband has said that he gets it, the less I have believed that he does. The more he said he "understood" voter concerns (rather than shared them) the more I wondered whether he really does.'

Finally back to the Guardian, this is Deborah Orr, writing two days on: 'The first time I watched Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour conference on Tuesday I felt soothed, even grateful. I'd waited a long time to hear a Labour leader say such things after all. Then every time I saw a clip of the speech, that clip seemed slightly absurd... New Labour was a tragedy. New Generation Labour, I'm afraid, seems farcical to me already.'

Polly and the Non-Doms

I like Polly Toynbee. In my book A Classless Society, I celebrated her 1995 article in the aftermath of the fiftieth anniversary of VE Day, when she chided the British nation for being so obsessed with the past on 8 May that it forgot to make anything of Europe Day on 9 May. Leave aside that nonsense about defeating Nazism, she urged us, and get on with celebrating the EU. To be charitable, let's assume it was satire.

Her latest piece in the Guardian is a little less frivolous. She argues that the Labour Party's commitment to (sort of) abolishing the non-domiciled tax category may prove to be as 'totemic' as Margaret Thatcher's policy of selling council houses to their tenants. Whether the commitment (if enacted) would raise any revenue is irrelevant: 'The message, not the money, is what matters.'

I think she's right. This is a purely symbolic gesture. And I suspect it may play very well, possibly even among those Labour voters who are being tempted toward Ukip.

But what is the message that Ed Miliband is sending out with this announcement? According to Toynbee, it represents, along with the 'mansion' tax and the 50 per cent tax rate, a 'significant break with New Labour's contamination, infatuation and fear of the super-rich'.

And that seems to me to be a bit of a letdown. If even Labour's friends (and I believe that Toynbee is presently a friend of the Party) can only spin this as being an exorcism of New Labour ghosts, that doesn't really fit into the category of 'totemic policies that announce what a party stands for'. Rather, it's negative; it announces what Miliband is against, not what he's for. And what he's against, says Toynbee, is Tony Blair. Which is as a good way of uniting the nation as any, but is a slightly odd approach to take for the leader of the Labour Party.

A decent policy, but not one that feels like it's in the same class as council-house sales. More like Blair's own attack on Clause Four, though a bit later in the day.