The man who will make British Labour unelectable?

He has electrified a political debate about the future of the United Kingdom with his straightforward, unspun and honest brand of socialist policies.

At 66, backbencher Jeremy Corbyn, who was first elected to parliament in 1983, became the unlikely and unexpected frontrunner in the Labour leadership campaign, upsetting the Labour establishment (Tony Blair derided supporters of Corbyn’s bid as ‘needing a heart transplant’), and promising nationalisation of essential services like the railways.

His supporters are mostly young but he has the strong backing of the unions.

His critics however fear that Corbyn, who follows in a tradition of anti-austerity movements like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, will keep David Cameron’s Tories in power because he cannot bridge with the aspirations of ‘middle England’.

Even here in Malta, those who worked inside ‘new Labour’ to get Joseph Muscat elected say that Corbyn’s seismic shift to the left will be disastrous for British Labour.

“Authentic and genuine, not your typical Westminster politician, his core beliefs are music to socialists like me: tackling poverty, social justice and anti-austerity,” says Kurt Farrugia, head of communications for the Labour government.

“[But] in terms of electability, Corbyn would send the party into a downward spiral, if not absolute annihilation,” he says.

Farrugia has worked alongside Prime Minister Joseph Muscat since his election as leader in 2008, forming part of Labour’s rebranding into a party of catch-all aspirations, a strategy party lifted straight out of the Blairist playbook. He thinks a radical shift to the left will doom British Labour to more years in opposition.

“Paradoxically, his leftist ideology makes him the only candidate presenting a ‘new’ way of doing politics, a real contrast to conservative politics. Is it the change Labour and Britain need? Certainly not.”

Farrugia says the centre-left can only achieve consensus and power with a pro-business but socially conscientious agenda, and a sensible reform agenda. “A moderate voice, clearly to the left but with a credible change programme… a reformist who can read the sign of the times without shocking the system.”

Labour candidate and declared ‘moderate’ Aaron Farrugia says Corbynism is a risky gamble for Labour to win back Conservative-held constituencies, and says his supporters are hijacking the party to step away from Tony Blair’s modernising platforms – “the hard, loony left... Tony Benn supporters and Michael Foot aficionados, unions like Unite, Unison and the CWU, and the new registered members buying into Corbyn’s easy, uncompromising and sellable solutions.”

Unsurprisingly, he backs Blairist candidate Liz Kendall for leader. But Farrugia agrees that social democrats must craft a new narrative based on equality and freedom, saying that social democrat parties were wiped out when they became indistinguishable from the right at a time when recession and the financial crisis raised people’s dependence on welfare support.

But he says a Corbyn leadership will not prevail over the Tories. He draws parallels with former London mayor Ken Livingstone, both anti-austerity, supported by unions and greens and those disenchanted by the Blair-Brown years. “[But] with all the advantages Livingstone has over Corbyn – a track record to start with – Livingstone lost out to Boris Johnson in 2012. If the former didn’t win in London, it is highly unlikely that Corbyn can win a general election. He will alienate the moderates – the people that decide elections. A Corbyn win means it’s Christmas in July for the Tories. And they know it.”

It is clear in the way that the two Farrugias speak, that Labour’s left-wing tradition is out of favour with its moderate, pro-business, centrist compromise.

But as Dundee resident and academic Prof. John Baldacchino points out, this may well be where Blairism has taken Labour today… “where real issues of democracy, social justice and other strong principles that distinguished Labour’s political programmes from others, are now hard to come by.”

And he echoes gripes that are also found in Malta’s vanilla politics, where what often matters for parties and their leaders is how the economy fares and little else.

“British Labour has become too close to a centre-ground that makes it indistinguishable from the Tories, making it difficult for voters to understand why they should vote Labour… what matters is ‘how to handle the economy’ without questioning its postulates and what kind of economy it represents. This creates a managerial context where certain economic values are taken as absolutes,” Baldacchino says.

His analysis is that Labour is grappling with two problems, the first a generational one with young Corbyn-ists who “do not really appreciate or understand the troubling past through which Labour, in the days before and after Michael Foot, became unelectable”; and the “crucial” Scottish issue, where Labour lost dismally.

“Whoever is leader must face the fact that Labour cannot afford to remain fractured in Scotland and under constant siege in England… the irony is that while some argue that Labour lost in England because it appeared to move to the left under Miliband’s direction, in Scotland it has been suffering from a steady haemorrhage of votes because it was and is regarded as being on the right and no different from the Tories.”