The silly season is supposed to end tomorrow. September sidles in and normality replaces August’s frivolity. The reality of winter will be with us soon enough, too. That, at any rate, is the theory but it seems, on both sides of the Atlantic, that sillyness is likely to last for some time yet.
There’s the twin risings of Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn, for instance. It might initially seem as though they have little in common but a more penetrating gaze at their improbable ascent to prominence discerns certain commonalities. Trump is the American Corbyn and Corbyn the British Trump.
The difference, of course, is significant. Trump won’t win the Republican nomination; it still looks as though Corbyn will be the next Labour leader. Trump-mania is a sickness that will pass in time; Corbynmania appears set to doom the Labour party for a political generation. Labour’s leadership contest has taken the form of a winner-takes-all single contest.
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