THE mainstream media are notoriously poor on history. Seeking out historical parallels takes journalistic resources, which many modern media operations just don’t have.

The latest poorly thought out parallel is the suggestion that current Labour leadership contender Jeremy Corbyn is another Michael Foot. The Independent, in an echo of 1983, dubbed the Labour leadership contest the “longest suicide vote.”

There is a serious point to be made here but one that is less significant now than it was 30 years ago: namely that leading a political party is hard work and takes lots of energy, and arguably that could be tough on someone in their 60s (Corbyn is 66). Actually both general public health and longevity have improved hugely in the last three decades, so it is much less of a concern.

The reality is anyway much more complex.

First, while some of the policies Foot stood on in 1983 were not universally popular with the electorate (after all he lost), most now seem like political mainstream common sense.

Second, the basic reason for the poll defeat was not really any policies that Foot may or may not have had but the 1981 SDP split from Labour. The SDP ran an alliance with the Liberals as the Social and Liberal Democrats for a bit and then in 1988 became the Liberal Democrats.

You may recall that the Liberal Democrats spent the last five years propping up David Cameron and Co and ended up on May 7 with just eight seats.

Foot won 8.4 million votes in 1983, achieving 27.6 per cent of the poll — which was on the low side. Labour has often topped 10 or 11 million votes in general elections, occasionally even more. It is worth reflecting however that in 2010 Labour got 8.6 million votes and 29 per cent of the poll and did just a little bit better in 2015.

It was argued that Foot, by 1983 a veteran Labour activist, was not the man to lead Labour at a general election.

Foot was certainly a man of the left — a nuclear disarmer and an MP for a radical South Wales seat. Yet he was of the post-1945 left, not the new left that had appeared from the 1960s onwards.

The reasons for Labour’s failure in 1983 have been pinned on the manifesto dubbed “the longest suicide note in history.”

It was a manifesto of the left. Its focus on managing the British economy and tackling high unemployment hardly seems that controversial now. Rather it was the attacks on it by Margaret Thatcher and those who had split to form the SDP that framed it as a “suicide note.”

Thatcher, who banged on in much the same way as George Osborne does about absurd comparisons between individual household borrowing and the national debt, attacked the manifesto because it openly said that money would need to be borrowed to stimulate economic recovery. New Labour got around this charge of economic mismanagement in 1997 by saying it would stick to Tory economic limits.

Other bits of the manifesto now seem to be amazingly good sense. For example, it says the banks will need to be regulated to make sure they lend and invest. It also proposed to set up a foreign investment unit to keep an eye on what multinational companies operating in Britain were up to.

The defeat of 1983 was the product of a historical context that does not exist in 2015. Corbyn’s policies are not those of 30 years ago. Indeed the only thing that has endured over those three decades is his beard.