Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the UK’s Labour Party. The return of the traditional left comes as the Malta Labour Party shot to power by distancing itself from socialism. Caroline Muscat looks at the hopes and fears.

The Malta Labour Party won power in 2013 with a landslide majority of 36,000, after spending 25 years in opposition, bar a two-year stint in the 1990s. The PL was largely seen as unelectable following Dom Mintoff’s efforts to establish socialism in the country.

The PL’s electoral success was partly a result of its ability to rebrand the party and position it in the centre with a message that it was now “pro-business”.

It was a strategy adopted by former British prime minister Tony Blair that led to successive electoral success.

Last week, Jeremy Corbyn – a veteran left-winger who professes an admiration for Karl Marx – was elected leader of the Labour Party.

Talk of a return to the dark days of socialism, and the end of the UK Labour Party immediately dominated debate on his victory. He was branded as “unelectable” by conservatives and Labour Party members who had supported the Blair project. These lines were echoed even in Malta.

The Sunday Times of Malta foreign affairs columnist Anthony Manduca agrees that Mr Corbyn’s election as leader of the Labour Party is not good news for Britain and the British centre-left.

Those hundreds of thousands who voted Corbyn leader are not a bunch of loonies, as some would like to portray them. They are men and women who have had enough of the politics of spin and pretentions

“Mr Corbyn represents the old-fashioned, far-left Socialist wing of the Labour Party and the party’s chances of winning the next general election are now next to zero,” according to Mr Manduca.

It is not the first time the UK had a political leader deemed unelectable. Margaret Thatcher was seen as an extremist who had hijacked the Conservative Party – her voice was too shrill, her clothes were wrong and she was not part of the club. Yet, she took over the floundering party and moved on to change British politics.

Woodrow Wyatt, a commentator who then became a Thatcherite loyalist after she won, had warned she would take the party in “an extremist, class-conscious, right-wing direction” that would prevent the Tories winning for a decade.

The parallels between Ms Thatcher’s election as Tory leader in 1975 and Mr Corbyn’s victory last week are impossible to ignore, even if they come from different ends of the political spectrum.

Former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis said they were both “conviction politicians”. He said anti-austerity and anti-war MP Mr Corbyn was someone viewed as extreme but who could shift the political scenery like the former Conservative prime minister.

So are people calling for a difficult kind of politics? Are they asking for the return of ideology? Mr Corbyn is a left-wing, anti-establishment leader who pitched a new kind of politics: bold, authentic and principled.

“Those hundreds of thousands who voted Corbyn leader are not a bunch of loonies, as some would like to portray them,” said John Baldacchino, a professor of arts education at the University of Dundee.

“They are men and women who have had enough of the politics of spin and pretentions… Mr Corbyn is speaking with a different vocabulary; he is not seeing a hierarchy in ministries but an equal need to look at education as much as the economy, or health as much as defence… he is already offering something very different.”

Prof. Baldacchino said the experiment that was ‘New Labour’ in the late 1990s was based on a shrewd calculation which Mr Blair and his entourage made, bet on and won.

“Labour got closer to the centre, became part of the establishment and kept winning. But this was a Blairite project which took many in Labour with him, though not everyone... Blair’s ‘New Labour’ worked because it threw in the towel and decided to literally blur the boundaries,” he added.

Former prime minister Alfred Sant was the one who started creating that shift in Malta from Labour’s socialist roots and repositioning it in the centre to make it more electable.

He admits the drift to the centre means the left is no longer distinguishable from the right and he says Labour and social democratic activists are reacting.

“The adoption of neo-liberal policies across the political spectrum against the background of globalisation has emphasised the shift that in part was initially motivated by the wish to become ‘electable’. The mood is now swinging towards a clear statement that this is what the left stands for, in defiance of the consequences,” Dr Sant said.

He said it will be a difficult left-leaning message to get to the masses through a right-leaning media. This was seen in the immediate attack on Mr Corbyn following his election.

The Conservative party’s official response was to frame Mr Corbyn as a threat as reflected by Prime Minister David Cameron’s tweet: “The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your family’s security.” It was a message taken up by the Rupert Murdoch media and the message spread like wildfire.

This led commentators to say that the politics of fear had taken over the politics of hope. Yet Mr Corbyn’s first appointment as party leader was a demonstration in solidarity with refugees.

In his speech to crowds delivered just hours after becoming the new Labour leader Mr Corbyn addressed the government: “Open your hearts and open your minds and open your attitude towards supporting people who are desperate, who need somewhere safe to live, want to contribute to our society, and are human beings just like all of us.”

This was a welcome gesture, former journalist Karl Schembri said. Now working with refugees in the Middle East, Mr Schembri said it marked a shift from the current UK government’s declared policy of taking in a mere 20,000 refugees over five years.

He said thousands of refugees need protection and cannot stay in the region any longer as the surrounding countries that have hosted millions are starting to buckle under the pressure.

“Solutions need to tackle the crisis at its roots: that is finding a peaceful, political resolution to the Syrian crisis, not fuelling the crisis further with more weapons. In the meantime Europe has to increase aid to help desperate refugees and spread the distribution of asylum seekers who reach its shores fairly,” Mr Schembri said.

Mr Corbyn’s message offers hope to some, even beyond the UK’s borders, while he is being regarded as a threat by others. Time will tell. But if Ms Thatcher is anything to go by, many may be in for a surprise.

Corbyn: Some of what he stands for

Economy: His approach for ‘growth not austerity’ is one of his most comprehensive policy areas.

Foreign policy and defence: Mr Corbyn pledges that a Labour government would halt the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent and push towards disarmament. He has also called for Britain to leave Nato.

Middle East: He said he supports Israel’s right to exist but opposes what he describes as “Israel’s occupation policies”.

Environment: Mr Corbyn said he wants Britain to provide “international leadership” on climate change.