The left’s new pin-up swept in to Brighton on Sunday as trade union delegates gathered for the start of the TUC’s annual conference.
The man posing for photographs and shaking hands with star struck delegates as they set up their stalls, however, was not Labour’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn, but the former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis.
In a sign of the UK’s changed political landscape since Corbyn’s overwhelming victory on Saturday, Varoufakis, the leading light of Greece’s radical Syriza party until his resignation, was there to show solidarity – not only with the Britain’s trade unions, but also the new Labour leader.
“I am delighted,” he said. “At long last there is going to be a genuine debate in Britain about the course of this country.”
On the conference fringe his support was welcome among delegates who, although in celebratory mood, were wary of the challenges ahead and nervous of the likely onslaught from Corbyn’s opponents in the media and political establishment.
“The real fight starts now,” said Glen Kelly, as he set up an anti-austerity stall on Brighton seafront. Corbyn “has got to watch his back and his front … there are those in the Labour party who are out to get him already and therefore he is going to need all the allies and support he can get from the trade union movement”.
It was a theme repeated by delegates inside the conference hall. A sense of excitement, tempered by an awareness of the likely backlash in the months ahead.
“It is very exciting, but now there is a bit of bafflement,” said one young delegate who had been at the central London pub where Corbyn celebrated his victory on Saturday night. “We have won and we are not really used to winning, but we know there is going to be a lot of challenges ahead … people are being very realistic.”
Long-time union member Tom Hedley, 65, said Corbyn’s success, welcomed by populist leftwing movements across Europe, indicated that established political rules were changing.
“So many young people have been mobilised by this and I think it is part of a different type of politics that has seen the rise of Ukip, the SNP and the Green party. The challenge now is to harness that and widen the appeal.”
Just up the road in Hove, one of the few seats in the south that Labour won from the Tories in May, a sense of hope was mixed with realism about the scale of the challenges ahead.
Walking past the Labour party offices with his two-year-old daughter asleep in a pram, Matt Connell, 34, who voted Labour last time, said Corbyn’s victory was either “incredibly exciting or terrifying”.
“It could be the most wonderful thing, if he can appeal to those who do not vote or have moved away from Labour … People are crying out for something different, but it is going to be a huge challenge because of the opposition he will face.”
Sitting next to Varoufakis was Mark Serwotka, the general secretary of the PCS union, and he was in no doubt that politics had changed for the better in the past 48 hours.
He said people had called him and his union deficit deniers for their anti-austerity stance for years, and that talk of £120bn in avoided and evaded tax had been repeated dismissed as fantasy.
“I can tell you now that it really lovely to be at congress where what we are saying is the mainstream,” he said. “Not only of the union movement but now also it is the position of Her Majesty’s opposition.”
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