JEREMY CORBYN knew from the moment of his election that he would be under the cosh from political opponents.

And so it has been, with acute media pressure over issues as varied as the European Union to God Save the Queen, but how can the poor man recover from the body blow that Alistair Darling is “not quite sure” what Corbyn is for?

Displaying the political acuity for which he is famed, Darling told the Herald that “you cannot win an election in Scotland or the UK unless you take the majority of people with you.”

Possibly the former chancellor missed the news that the Islington North MP took the majority of Labour voters — 59.5 per cent, to be precise — with him to become party leader.

Winning elections isn’t a novelty to Corbyn who gained his seat in 1983 and has increased his majority ever since.

He has consistently eschewed the New Labour obsessions with spin, soundbites, triangulation and the “centre ground” Holy Grail.

In contrast, Darling warned new Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale to remain in the centre ground because “it would be a huge mistake for the Labour Party to think it should be pitching to the left.”

Many commentators believe that the Scottish National Party won its general election landslide because it outflanked Labour to the left, urging opposition to the austerity agenda backed by the Tories, Liberal Democrats and Labour.

Not so, declares Darling, explaining: “The nationalists are quintessentially New Labour in their approach. They are parked in the centre ground.”

So in the gospel according to Saint Alistair, Labour fought the general election from the centre ground, as did the SNP, but the nationalists won rather a lot of seats and Labour just one.

Some would suggest that the apparent illogicality in Darling’s argument is matched by his capacity for backing losers.

Not so, snort his defenders, pointing out that the Better Together campaign he led jointly with the Tories narrowly defeated Scottish independence in the national referendum.

The former chancellor went on from this triumph to throw his weight behind Blairite ex-minister Jim Murphy, enthusing: “Jim has the enthusiasm, the energy and above all he’s a fighter. For too long we have sat back when we needed to fight.”

How was Darling to know that his own close identification of Labour with Tories would be manna from heaven for the SNP at the general election?

Building on his disastrous record, Darling emphasised his backing for Liz Kendall in the Labour leadership election.

“I think she recognises the scale of the challenge we face. She is a realist but also understands that if we are not the party of change we could easily become a party of the past,” he pontificated.

His favourite finished a woeful last with just 4.5 per cent of the vote, yet he still affects to believe that his addiction to the sorry outdated New Labour mantras merits attention.

Corbyn’s victory had its roots in growing dissatisfaction, both within Labour and beyond, with a culture of political and economic uniformity.

The new leader talks a language that people understand and speaks from the heart rather than rambling on with a fixed smile while saying nothing.

His programme priorities were laid out clearly during the long leadership election campaign.

If Darling still doesn’t know what Corbyn is for, that says more about his political myopia than it does about the new leader.