The idea that youth voters are more progressive but under-represented is not a new one, not specific to the English-speaking world and clearly not to Australia. What’s new, and what I want to argue for, is the idea that we should be actively combating this well-known state of affairs. The youth vote is powerful and should be treated as such, but youth themselves can’t help but feel powerless.

Corbyn’s election sets up a real-world challenge to a central belief of Australian Labor’s political class – that shifting to the left will not win elections. This betrays a two-dimensional sort of thinking that belongs to the analogue age: we only have to move the marker rightwards until we reach the magical point of electability. The social base, which made this sort of strategy a viable way of winning in the 1980s and 1990s, has changed. Trying to win more elections on this basis is most certainly madness.

The drive towards consensus between liberals and conservatives on refugee and asylum policy has little to do with pragmatism and much more to do with a shared desire for control. For those who imagine themselves in positions of power, a kind of permanent role-playing game for ALP activists and hangers-on, the prerequisite of any effective policy is the maintenance of government control over the process.

Even if Labor can increase its primary vote at the next federal election (and this is not necessarily a given) it will likely only gain a share similar to 2010 – hardly a paragon of achievement. A projection of the current trend gives us a date when Labor can no longer claim to be the major party in any progressive coalition-forming government, let alone attempt to govern in its own right. That date is 2032.