In certain circles, it’s currently very fashionable to bemoan that Jeremy Corbyn only appeals to middle-class people. Broadsheet journalists and Westminster insiders decry the Labour leader’s apparent inability to attract anyone who would seem out of place at an Islington dinner party.

The stereotype of the foolish, privately educated Marxist – insulated from the real-word consequences of the political strategy they advocate – is evoked regularly. The well-to-do backgrounds of both Corbyn and his chief spin doctor, Seamus Milne, adding weight to the suggestion.

Implicit in this narrative is the idea that it’s the other side of the Labour Party that truly has the interests of working-class people at heart. Anyone who really cares about improving the living conditions of people on low incomes can’t afford to ponce around making a show of being ‘principled’ and watch their party haemorrhage votes as a result, critics suggest. Corbyn supporters are predominately privileged individuals who can afford to treat the whole thing as an ideological game.

They do have something of a point. Polling consistently shows that Corbyn is extremely unpopular with voters and, while it’s early days, it’s hard to envisage a course of events that leads to a reversal of this trend in time for the next general election. On social media, his supporters curse rebellious Labour MPs and a hostile media for turning the public against him, but even if these complaints aren’t entirely unfounded it’s besides the point. Wringing your hands over what could have been won’t make the actual situation any less bleak.

At the same time, clinging to the idea that Labour has been hijacked by upper middle-class radicals allows so-called moderates to avoid facing up to what has actually gone wrong. Not least, the fact that Corbyn’s sweeping first-round victory in the leadership contest was enabled, to a great extent, by three alternative candidates who utterly failed to inspire the selectorate. What’s more, polling found that Corbyn’s supporters were far more likely to have an income of below £40k, and to be in working class and lower middle-class occupations, than those who favoured Burnham, Cooper and, particularly, Kendall.

This is unsurprising when you consider the point at which Corbyn’s campaign really took off: when all three other candidates opted to toe the party line, as mandated by caretaker leader Harriet Harman, and abstain from voting on the second reading of the government’s welfare bill. Working-class people are more likely to know someone vulnerable to being hit by welfare cuts, even if they’re not themselves at risk. It makes sense that working-class Labour supporters might be especially likely to prioritise the issue.

Corbyn was unknown, undistinguished and, let’s face it, something of an oddball. At the start of the leadership contest, no credible commentator considered that he might actually win the damn thing. It’s doubtful that Corbyn even saw it as a possibility himself. Of the 59.5% of voters who selected him as their first choice, only a fraction were ideologues who would have chosen the most left-wing option in any circumstance. Most took a massive gamble on the sole candidate who seemed robustly committed to Labour values.

As his critics predicted, it’s a gamble that hasn’t paid off. Notions of ‘changing the terms of the debate’ aside, it’s difficult for a UK political party to achieve much while it stays in opposition. At the moment, there’s every indication that a Corbyn-led Labour might not even be able to secure 200 seats in 2020. Undeniably, he’s shaping up to be an electoral disaster.

Contrary to what is frequently claimed, though, the problem isn’t that Corbyn only appeals to the middle-classes. The problem is that he’s equally unpopular with everyone. Recent research by YouGov found he has an average rating of 3.69/10 among people in ABC1 social groups and 3.75/10 among people in the C2DE groups.

His supporters cut across class backgrounds and, so too, do his detractors. For every anecdote about lifelong trade unionist abandoning Labour because of Corbyn’s stance on foreign policy issues, there’s someone like my own aunt, who is affected by the Bedroom Tax and thinks he’s God’s gift to politics. Similarly, a sample of newspaper columnists alone should be enough to demonstrate that it’s not only working-class former Labour voters who find the new leader’s opinion distasteful. Dan Hodges announced he’s quitting the party, again. Nick Cohen claims he’s been driven to give up on “the left” altogether.

It’s bizarre watching high-earning media and political insiders clamour to condemn Corbyn’s supporters as privileged and out of touch and, implicitly, present themselves as the true voice of working-class interests. Likewise, it’s hard to see how going to war with the majority of Labour members who voted for the current leader is a route to electoral success. The party’s strength has always lay in its large network of activists. It’s not enough to assume that the left, in England at least, has nowhere else to go at voting time.

Corbyn’s perverse gift to Labour moderates is that they’re able to define themselves primarily against him. This distracts from the fact that, even if he’d never got those 35 nominations, it would probably still be hard to feel positive about the party’s electoral chances. Certainly, there’s no obvious alternative leader-in-waiting despite the appetite for finding someone to anoint. (The praise heaped on Hilary Benn for a mediocre speech opposing Corbyn was, frankly, embarrassing to witness.)

If the centre-left want to regain control of Labour, being Not Corbyn isn’t enough. Smearing everyone who supports him as a clueless trustafarian – in the face of concrete evidence to the contrary – is actively counterproductive. They need to sell a vision for the country the way Blair did, and the way Corbyn has to his sizeable following.

If they can’t win over the party faithful, what chance do they have in a general election anyway?

PHOTO: PA - Jeremy Corbyn arriving with supporters to make his first speech as leader to the Labour Party conference in Brighton