During the coronavirus crisis we will come to learn that Jeremy Corbyn was right The outbreak has shown that when there is a crisis, money can be found

After four and a half turbulent years Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader will come to an end this week, with the country in the grip of its biggest crisis since the Second World War. It is a crisis that is already changing what is politically possible and that may change our country for years even after the initial health crisis subsides.

Much will be written about Corbyn’s perceived personal strengths or failings. But as his mentor Tony Benn relentlessly said, “policies not personalities”. This crisis is proving policies are more important, and proving Corbyn to have been right on so many of the policies he chose to highlight in his leadership.

First and foremost, it is clear that Corbyn was right when he said, from his 2015 leadership campaign onwards, “austerity is a political choice, not an economic necessity”. Even before the scale of the coronavirus outbreak had been accepted in 10 Downing Street, the spending taps had been turned on – with new Chancellor Rishi Sunak announcing bundles of cash that his own party had been denouncing when John McDonnell proposed them just three months earlier.

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The coronavirus outbreak has shown that when there is a crisis, money can be found – just as it was to bail out the banks in 2008/09. But the damage done by austerity is plain to see: our NHS went into this crisis after the longest funding squeeze in its history, with 100,000 staff vacancies and with 17,000 fewer beds than in 2010.

Under Corbyn and McDonnell, Labour opposed both austerity and the privatisation of public services. Public services, publicly delivered and funded by redistributive taxation became consensual, and none of the Labour leadership candidates have broken with the key tenets ushered in by the 2017 manifesto.

Corbyn was elected Labour leader when the Welfare Reform Bill was still going through the House of Commons. He and McDonnell had been two of just 48 Labour MPs who voted against it, the latter opening his speech by announcing, “I would swim through vomit to vote against this Bill, and judging by some of the nauseating speeches tonight I might have to.”

His next sentence was more profound, “Poverty is not a lifestyle choice, it is imposed upon people”. At a time when then Chancellor George Osborne was painting those on benefits as “scroungers”, McDonnell’s words broke Labour’s silence.

A few months later, responding to the 2015 Budget, Corbyn ripped into Osborne’s proposed cuts to tax credits, forcefully contrasting the tax cuts for big business with the further poverty being inflicted on the poorest. Within weeks, Osborne had u-turned and the cuts were cancelled, keeping billions of pounds in the pockets of millions of families across Britain.

Corbyn deployed the same trick at the following Budget when proposed cuts to Personal Independence Payments would have taken £4.5 billion from disabled people. Again, by putting this at the forefront of his Budget response, Corbyn whipped up a rebellion that saw another u-turn and kept money with those that needed it most.

What these examples showed is that with leadership and a strong and consistent message, austerity could be resisted. That message helped Corbyn deprive Theresa May of her majority in the 2017 election, the only election since 1997 in which Labour has advanced. Imagine if Labour had learned that lesson in 2010 rather than waiting until 2015.

For me these were the proudest moments as Labour’s Policy Director, not just because they led to Government defeats and u-turns or even put pounds back in the pockets of some of the poorest people. It was because it built confidence among MPs and members that austerity could be defeated, and defeated even when it was targeted at some of the most demonised people in society.

We also had to overcome caution and conservatism internally. Some fellow members of Corbyn’s own team feared focusing too much on the poorest, while the then shadow work and pensions secretary argued the benefit cap shouldn’t be opposed because it was popular. Hardly surprising if opposition MPs lacked the courage to argue against it.

Just six Labour MPs had voted against the 2014 Immigration Act that ushered in the “hostile environment”. Three of those MPs were Jeremy Corbyn, John McDonnell and Diane Abbott. As leader, Corbyn set the tone from the off. His first act, just minutes after being elected Labour leader, was to speak at a “Refugees are Welcome” demonstration. The days of “Controls on Immigration” mugs were dispatched and Labour answered the Windrush scandal with a shadow Home Secretary and leadership who had opposed anti-migrant legislation for decades.

Now, as we rely even more heavily than usual on a workforce of cleaners, nurses and care workers who are disproportionately likely to be migrants, it’s clearer than ever that the moral leadership we need is neither the Tories’ hostile environment nor the “legitimate concerns” timidity of New Labour, but principled anti-racism.

Both former trade union officials, Corbyn and McDonnell, had always seen part of their role as Labour MPs was to use their platform to give workers on strike a voice. It was no surprise when members of the Fire Brigades Union took the decision in 2015 to reaffiliate to Labour under Corbyn.

Watching the appalling behaviour of multi-millionaire bosses like Richard Branson, Tim Martin and Mike Ashley towards their workers, the coronavirus crisis has also made clear that people need stronger rights at work. The loss of trade union representation across so many workplaces is one of the main reasons why so many workers need benefits just to makes ends meet or to pay the rent, while their bosses amass grotesque wealth.

Many recently laid-off workers are also now confronting the shambles that is our benefits system. The safety net that once claimed to provide social security has been ripped to shreds. Universal Credit was meant to be rolled out in full several years ago, but it won’t now be ready until 2026. No wonder the already failing system is collapsing under the current weight of demand.

But when, or rather if, people do get through to make a claim they will be shocked at the poverty rates at which our benefits are paid. The Health Secretary Matt Hancock candidly admitted he could not live on the £94 per week paid through statutory sick pay. Yet those who have lost their jobs will be receiving just £73 per week on Jobseeker’s Allowance. Labour had been campaigning scrap Universal Credit, raise benefit levels, end sanctions, and trial Universal Basic Income.

In the latter years of New Labour a huge distance had grown up between the party and its membership, which Ed Miliband’s leadership only partially closed. As someone prominent in the early New Labour project candidly admitted to me recently, “Jeremy won in 2015 because he was the best candidate”.

Corbyn inspired people to join a political party again, after years when it seemed political parties were dying and, instead of public engagement, state funding was put forward as the solution. The Labour Party’s membership trebled under Corbyn, helping to sort the party’s finances and make it reliant on hundreds of thousands of people, not a few dodgy donors donating hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Those twin elements of Corbyn’s leadership look set to endure – a mass membership party and a socialist policy consensus that could earn a fairer hearing as the coronavirus throws our country’s deficiencies into sharper relief.

Asked during the 2015 leadership campaign what socialism meant to him, Jeremy Corbyn replied: “It is an obvious way of living. You care for each other, you care for everybody, and everybody cares for everyone else. It’s obvious, isn’t it?”. It feels more obvious than ever.

Andrew Fisher was Executive Director of Policy at The Labour Party from 2016 to 2019. He is the author of The Failed Experiment – a book about UK economic policy and the financial crash of 2007/08.