THERE is no doubt that Jeremy Corbyn’s involvement in the Labour leadership contest has caused an explosion of ideas and excitement.

Those turning up to the launch of his Protecting Our Planet manifesto found themselves swimming in it.

While Republican hopefuls in the US queue up to denounce Pope Francis and deny climate change, and Britain’s Labour grandees queue up to denounce themselves for letting Corbyn join the race, Corbyn himself plots a different course — one that is a long remove from either Mormons or morons.

Corbyn’s plans for turning Britain into a clean energy economy are genuinely transformational.

In the coming decades eight countries, 55 cities and 60 regions are aiming to have 100 per cent renewable electricity, heating/cooling and/or transport systems. Britain is not among them. But that is where Corbyn wants to take us.

This is not just about changing technologies. It involves a fundamental rewrite of energy market rules — making energy “systems” more open, accountable, sustainable … and affordable.

It involves creating new social rights to the development of local energy systems and breaking the grip of Britain’s energy cartel.
Corbyn is emerging as the Emperor’s New Clothes candidate, the one person willing to question the emptiness of current British energy policies.

He came into the contest just wanting to influence the debate. Now he has become it.
The International Monetary Fund may report that Britain throws seven times the amount of subsidies at fossil fuels as it puts into renewables. But read the tabloids and you could believe that clean energy would plunge the nation into debt and darkness. Britain’s energy politics have been lulled into the contentment of its own stupidity.

Listen to the platitudes of government ministers, their departments or the regulatory agencies.

They would all have you believe it’s not the rigged energy market that’s at fault, but the public.

British consumers, we are told, are too “sticky.” We don’t swap between suppliers enough. But if the choice is between Fred West, Rose West and the Wild West, we are all in the wrong game. And Corbyn is the only one saying so.

Today, a typical household in Germany can choose to buy its energy from over 70 different suppliers (out of a national total of over 1,100). Half of German energy suppliers are owned by local authorities, communities and small businesses. And over 180 German towns and cities are taking over their local electricity grids — selling themselves cleaner (and cheaper) electricity that they increasingly produce for themselves.

France has just passed a law requiring all new commercial developments to have solar or “nature friendly” roofs.

California has mandated that, by 2030, there has to be a 50 per cent reduction in vehicle petrol consumption (like taking 36 million cars and trucks off the roads), that 50 per cent of electricity must be renewable and there must be a 50 per cent improvement in the energy efficiency of all its buildings.

And all this is before Elon Musk (and many others) trash the old market model, by making energy storage more affordable, local and renewable.

This is the world that Corbyn grasps — one already being irresistibly transformed by technology but which must itself be reshaped by society.

Perhaps for the first time in human history, a much better — lighter, cleaner, fairer — way of living is within our grasp, but we have to break up the current energy racket to reach it.

Not just Britain, but the whole world has to work out a new economic architecture of survival — and we have to do it quickly.

In energy terms, Corbyn wants to begin this by rethinking the role of the state, redefining the nature of markets and bringing new partners into the energy game.

He would include many of the towns, cities and regions already seeking to transform themselves into localised “virtual” power stations. He would include the technology companies and local communities that are helping them to do so. He wants to create markets that sell “less” consumption before more, and take clean energy before dirty.

Those whinging about Corbyn’s involvement in the leadership contest miss some of the bigger issues that Labour has to address. Machine politics stripped Labour of its visionaries and replaced them with functionaries.

Now, when bigger changes are called for than ever before in my lifetime, there is no-one there to grasp them.

If the last election was fought out between Dull and Duller, Labour’s succession race was heading in the same direction. Corbyn’s critics hide from the fact that he has touched a deeper nerve than they do. He talks about changing society, not moderating austerity.

Those turning out in their thousands to Corbyn’s meetings hunger for a more ambitious, inclusive and transformational politics. One way or another, Labour has to wake up and smell the coffee.

What’s happening is not a Tory or Trotskyist conspiracy. Corbyn has just reached out to people with an interest in real politics, but not Westminster “playground politics.”

Labour’s determination to turn itself into a marketing machine, obsessed with “does-my-bum-look-big-in-this?” policy formulations, was always going to end in tears.

Like it or not, Britain’s whole political system has to learn from the Corbyn phenomenon.
Across the country, across generations, Corbyn has unleashed a conspiracy of hope — and that could be dangerous. It could be exciting. It could change everything.

Alan is a recovering politician who now works on energy and climate policies.