Jeremy Corbyn reminds me of electoral reformers pre-2011

If you want a list of things electoral reformers got wrong for the 2011 AV referendum, you better also have a good few hours to spare. Just for the summary.

But one thing reformers got wrong has gone mostly unremarked, even though it now has strong echoes in the early days of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership.

It’s that pre-referendum, electoral reformers had mostly spent their time talking to each other, and as a result adopted a barrel load of beliefs and assumptions that were, in their eyes, obviously correct. When the referendum came, things that were seen as so obvious as to be absurd to question, however, suddenly become contentious. Things such as the idea of transferring votes, which in the hands of No campaigners became an unfair mechanism which let some people – but only some – get more than one say in an election. An absurd argument, yet one that left reformers flapping as they were so unused to dealing with it.

And so to Corbyn. If he had been at a typical left-wing public meeting last summer and asked about his views on getting on bended knee before the Queen, a deadpan answer with a slight smile and a ‘I’ll have to think about that’ would have worked well as a self-deprecating joke with a clear intent. Behave exactly the same in a less favourable environment, however, and it comes over very different.

As with electoral reformers, Corbyn is discovering how the sort of comments and assumptions that work so well with the audience he is used to come over very differently when tested against the rest of us.