HURRAH for Jeremy Corbyn, now safely past the 35 nominations hurdle — and not a moment too soon. The mountain to climb that now confronts Labour demands a refreshing new voice that acknowledges the ideological weakness that have crippled the party over the last decade.

It demands someone prepared to confront the hard underlying structural issues that are relentlessly pulling this country down, notably austerity, an unaccountable banking sector, out-of-control market fundamentalism, a highly damaging privatisation of nearly all public services and explosive inequality.

Unless Labour presents an alternative vision to the failure of the last decade to confront these central issues, it is hard to see how the party can regain the nation’s confidence — particularly on economic and financial issues.

Labour now faces an enormous task. Unless the party recovers significantly in Scotland, where only 3 SNP MPs have majorities of less than 6,000, it would require a swing of 11.4 per cent in England and Wales to win in 2020. That is actually larger than the swing achieved across the UK in 1997, which was 10.3 per cent.

Nearly all the advantages which Labour hoped would see them through to victory on May 7 have evaporated. Contrary to expectation, the party increased its majorities in safe seats but lost out in many target marginals. There are now only 25 marginals with majorities of less than 3,000, though the Tories now hold 23 of them. If the Tories now push through the boundary changes which the Lib Dems vetoed in 2013 — which they will — it is estimated that Labour will need some 106 seats to win a majority.

This will be harder than ever given the Scottish debacle, the mishap in key marginals, the decline of centre-left tactical voting, the inequality in funding and an electoral system that was previously believed to favour Labour but which now favours the Tories.

There are other factors too. The introduction of individual registration will enable the new constituencies to benefit the Tories, particularly in urban and socially deprived areas — Labour’s key zones. The Tories will no doubt also seek to extend the advantage they already have with expatriate voters, who largely vote Tory, by abolishing the current 15-year limit and increasing the right to vote to their whole life, even if they have had no direct connection with Britain or Northern Ireland for decades.

By contrast, trade union members will be required to opt in to paying the political levy, which will widen the funding inequality between the two parties still further.

Huge though these barriers are, they are certainly not insuperable. Labour could still win power: for example, with the support of the SNP and the Lib Dems if it were the second-largest party in a hung Parliament after a swing of 5 per cent. But what matters far more is an ideological reawakening on the left and the robustness of a new vision and a commanding narrative to promulgate it. Corbyn is the ideal figure to lead that renewal.

It’s depressing that so many of the leadership contestants seem to be colluding with George Osborne’s deplorable policies instead of attacking them head-on.

The simplest measure of overall economic performance is real GDP per head. In Britain’s case it is still, eight years on, no higher than at the start of 2007 and still below its pre-crisis peak.

At the end of last year Britain’s real GDP per head was nearly 16 per cent below where it would have been if the 1955-2007 trend had continued. Even Osborne’s boasted “recovery” hasn’t shrunk this gap. This largely explains why living standards have remained so depressed.

Or take productivity: UK output per hour is still 1.7 per cent lower than it had been in February 2008. Such a long period of stagnation is unprecedented since at least the 1800s. In the long run productivity determines standards of living. What is needed is fast productivity growth to match employment growth, but that has been lamentably absent because of the lack of buoyant demand — and it is that necessary element which has been crippled by prolonged austerity.

As a result, productivity growth has been dire. According to the IMF, British GDP per head is only 72 per cent of US levels, behind Germany’s 84 per cent and even France’s 74 per cent. For all these reasons, Osborne’s claim that Britain might be the most prosperous major economy in the world by 2030 is sheer fantasy. It’s political bombast at its most extreme.

Osborne’s big club with which to beat Labour is that he has “succeeded” in paying down the deficit. But he largely hasn’t. He boasted in 2010 that he would have eliminated it by this year; in fact it’s still a whopping £92 billion.

Worst of all — and this is the central argument against Osborne — the austerity policy allegedly designed to cut the deficit is misguided and downright wrong. By far the most effective way to cut deficits is to resist recession and combine rapid economic growth with deficit reduction.

This not a theory — it has been repeatedly proven in practice. The huge British deficits after the WWII (260 per cent of GDP compared with 80 per cent today) were easily subdued through rapid economic growth in the post-war years. Bill Clinton, in his eight years as US president, did something similar. He inherited George W Bush’s huge deficit and ended with none, largely because of fast economic growth.

Again, the much-praised reduction of the Swedish budget deficit during 1994-8 was achieved in a period of fast growth of GDP. In the US today, despite political deadlocks, the ratio of deficit to GDP has fallen due to economic growth.

Corbyn needs to promulgate these truths loud and clear. If he does, Osborne — for the first time in five years — will be held to account as the reckless failure he is.

Michael Meacher is Labour MP for Oldham West and Royton. This article first appeared as two blog posts at michaelmeacher.info.