Last week, the New Statesman carried an interview with Neil Kinnock, who in effect suggested that Jeremy Corbyn should start connecting with the electorate quickly or consider resigning.

This surprisingly didn’t go well with Corbyn Twitter, and at the weekend, a new meme started circulating, which created a bit of a stir:

Yeah…

When I say “created a bit of a stir”, I mean that a lot of people thought it was very stupid. The author wrote a short blog post about it; you can see it here.

Setting aside the weird implicit idea that every Labour leader should be granted the same fixed amount of time in charge (by which logic, Ed is due another four years before Jeremy can start), there are a couple of points I wanted to pick up on.

Firstly, the text of the meme itself. Again we see a manifestation of what is a very common idea in Corbyn supporting circles; that Jeremy Corbyn is restoring Labour to its traditional values. Here, Neil Kinnock is cast as the person responsible for tearing Labour away from its roots; that before 1983, the party was some sort of Corbynist paradise, and then Kinnock came along and ruined everything.

It’s just not true. Any study of Labour history shows that it is clearly the current leadership which is an aberration; to find a leader similar to Corbyn, you have to look back to George Lansbury in the 1930s. This idea that Neil Kinnock represented a massive shift away from Labour’s heritage is nonsense, he stands fully within the very best traditions of the party.

You may support the current leadership, but to claim that it is trying to bring back some party which never really existed is a different matter. It is a mistake to confuse what you wish Labour to be with what Labour has always historically been.