Jeremy Corbyn has the vision, but his numbers don’t yet add up | Larry Elliott
Jeremy Corbyn is a high-risk choice as Labour leader. If elected, he could crash and burn very quickly. But it's not that hard to see why he is the frontrunner in Labour's leadership race. After the global financial crisis broke in the summer of 2007, the Labour government was left ideologically adrift. It had accepted the broad thrust of Margaret Thatcher's economic settlement - the primacy of market forces, privatisation, the replacement of manufacturing by financial services as the hub of the UK economy - but then, overnight, the model seized up. When the first oil shock led to stagflation in the 70s, the Thatcherites were ready with an alternative. When the queues formed outside branches of Northern Rock Gordon Brown's government made up policy on the hoof, such was the intellectual vacuum.
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