Britain’s one-party state

CHEERING crowds flock to his rallies. Youngsters embrace him for selfies and hang on his every tweet. Jeremy Corbyn, improbable, crinkly rockstar of the far left, is on course to be re-elected Labour’s leader on September 24th in a landslide vote among the party’s members, hundreds of thousands of whom have joined up in the past year just to back him.Yet Mr Corbyn’s popularity among Labour’s half-million members and affiliates is not replicated among Britain’s 45m voters, most of whom do not share his desire to overthrow capitalism and unilaterally forsake the country’s nuclear weapons, nor his soft spot for strongmen such as Vladimir Putin and the late Hugo Chávez. The party is polling at its lowest in opposition for 30 years. Among young people, his most sympathetic constituency, Mr Corbyn has an approval rating of -18%. Among the over-65s it is -68%. Labour is on course to lose scores of seats at the next election. And it will not end there. Parties often pick bad candidates—mainstream Republicans recoil at Donald Trump, for instance—but it usually costs them no more than one election. Mr Corbyn, by contrast, is packing Labour with allies and seems more concerned with building a long-term “movement” than winning power. The Conservative government can expect years without being seriously challenged in Westminster.