I have friends on the left who used to say that the best thing that ever happened to their political desires was the fall of the Soviet Union. It would make it possible for socialists to win and hold governments without the example of the USSR there to scare the children. And so things seem to be turning out. To go with Bernie Sanders in the US we now have Socialist Corbyn wins UK Labour leadership in landslide.

Radical leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn on Saturday won the crown of Britain’s main opposition Labour party in a landslide victory, becoming the nation’s most left-wing political leader for over 30 years.

The 66-year-old socialist, whose policies have been compared to those of Greece’s Syriza and Spain’s Podemos, was named leader after clinching 59.5 percent of the 422,664 votes cast by Labour party members and supporters.

The newly-elected leader condemned “grotesque levels of inequality” and “an unfair welfare system” in his victory speech to party members in central London.

The world is heading in a very strange direction. Every country has a large proportion of its population who wish to repeat the success of Chavez in Venezuela. I don’t therefore believe that this is even remotely right:

Despite the “Corbynmania” of his grassroots campaign, Tony Blair — Labour’s most electorally successful leader who is now deeply unpopular over Iraq — has warned that his victory would split Labour and consign the party to electoral oblivion.

I hope he’s right but we live in very strange times.