WHILE a succession of (mostly New) Labour grandees have spent time talking about what might happen if Jeremy Corbyn is elected, the more interesting question is what happens if he isn’t?

So far, it has been Corbyn bringing new, mostly young, people into the debate — and indeed the party. These young people are making traditional Labour Party demands: for secure, well paid, quality jobs; affordable accommodation; an effective health service and good prospects for the future.

However, it’s not just those new to politics that Labour has to win over. At the May general election the party lost large numbers of votes — to the SNP in Scotland and to the Greens, Ukip and the Conservatives everywhere else. And one of the main questions of the leadership election has been about how to win them back.

This makes the recent announcement that 3,200 people have been barred from voting in the upcoming leadership election because they voted for other parties in the past a very puzzling move. It seems that 1,900 of these had supported the Green Party and 400 the Conservatives. How irrational to justify exclusion on the basis of having despaired of Ed Miliband’s policies and leadership, since these contributed in no small way to the need for Labour to reinvent itself.

Corbyn, then, ticks two major boxes: he’s drawing new supporters into the party and winning back some of those who’d lost faith. Labour really does need a game-changer like this to stay relevant. Having faced the combination of a wipe-out in Scotland — where, once again, Corbyn seems able to communicate with voters — and boundary changes in England that will make life even harder for Labour south of the border, the party clearly needs to up its game. It needs to be more relevant, more visionary and more tuned-in to the needs of its supporters — and, especially, it needs to be less like the Tories.

But if Corbyn does not become party leader, is all that energy and enthusiasm simply going to dissipate? Or will it be channelled elsewhere? If it turns out that there is sufficient momentum to create an energetic new party to the left of Labour in England, it begs the further question: what might a choice between that and the Conservative Party do to an ill-defined party in between? There is thus a strong case for engaging with — and channelling — all that energy within the Labour Party, whatever the outcome of the leadership election.

New Labour’s apologists have focused on two main issues: electability and party splits. Neither of these are unusual or as cataclysmic as they’re intended to sound. While in a recent speech in London, Gordon Brown spoke warmly about taking inspiration from Neil Kinnock, he, like Brown, turned out to be unelectable. Blair, on the other hand, while electable, presided over some of the widest splits the party has seen. So shades of opinion don’t automatically make a party unelectable.

However, there is a potentially damaging split in the electorate, rather than the party. The present young generation is probably the first in modern times to be less well-off than their parents. They face worse employment and income prospects and the huge expense of accommodation is funding the housing equity wealth of their parents’ generation. So far, the older generation has given the Tories electoral advantage, particularly since they are more likely to vote. But now the young are on the move and they have recently been flocking to the Labour Party. Finding a way to engage them in a progressive political process could be part of the game-changer Labour needs — along with re-engaging with disillusioned supporters in both England and Scotland. In this respect, Corbyn’s intervention in the Labour Party leadership election has been an energising force.