The Fall of the Berlin Wall in '89 was a consensus shifter and it was inevitable that the Labour party had to move to the right to prosper at that point in history. And it worked. New Labour was in electoral terms largely successful.

However the global financial crisis has been another consensus shifter. The Tories used 'austerity' measures in an ideological way to attack the state and to place the burden on those at the lower end of the social spectrum while protecting the interests of the rich. Labour should have shifted leftwards at that point to protect its own people but it didn't - and that's why it lost the last election. And that's why people have subsequently flocked to Corbyn. If Miliband had had the guts to fight the last election on an anti-austerity platform he might have won and Corbyn wouldn't be in charge now.

The current tensions in the Labour Party are a direct result of this failure to realign. The MPs who won their seats on a Miliband ticket are hanging on like grim death to their careers, salaries, and perks while Labour Party members have done the correct thing (in my opinion) in pushing the party back to the left. The only problem is Corbyn himself. I can't imagine the blue-rinse brigade in the south east of England ever voting for him. And he can't insist on unity in his own party because he has never been loyal himself. He's not much of a speaker. And he is toothless at PMs questions. That said, I hope he beats Smith. The ongoing "Get Corbyn" campaign in the media has been a disgrace - especially at the supposedly impartial BBC - so it would be great if he wins.

But yeah, New Labour has had its day.