Back to the future: The May-Corbyn debate

The year is 1964 — and 1974. In two provincial high schools, 100 miles and a decade apart in the heart of middle England, two gawky teenagers are standing for election.

Like thousands of aspiring politicians before and since, a young Theresa May is cutting her teeth in her school’s mock poll, fighting as the Conservative candidate at the Wheatley Park School in Oxfordshire, a contest that coincides with the first of the two general elections to be held in 1974. She is 17.

It is a time of change at Wheatley Park, which has recently transformed from a selective girls’ grammar school to a co-ed comprehensive. Insulated from the upheaval in the sixth form, which has been allowed to continue much as it had before, the young Theresa nonetheless takes a dim view of educational revolution wrought by the Labour government of Harold Wilson; as Prime Minister 42 years later, one of her first acts will be to announce the rebirth of selective schools.

A decade earlier, a 15-year-old Jeremy Corbyn is running in another mock election, standing on behalf of the Labour Party at the Adams’ School, an all-male establishment that models itself on the public school system and is one of the few state schools to resist comprehensivization. It remains a grammar today. Corbyn hates the place.

Fast forward to 2017. Having stunned Westminster, and Europe, by going to the country three years early, Prime Minister May will face Labour leader Corbyn and his moribund party in an election in seven weeks’ time that will likely to prove to be the last — for at least one, if not both, of them.

As they prepare to do battle, why not speculate what might have transpired had they faced off against each other at their first. What would have happened had “Terry” Brazier, as she was known to her schoolmates, encountered Jeremy Corbyn in their youth, when hemlines were in flux and British membership of the European Economic Community was a mere twinkle in then-Tory leader Ted Heath’s eye.

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On the surface, Terry and Jeremy — both tall, earnest, soft-spoken — have a lot in common. Both have few friends, their serious natures repelling their more light-hearted peers. Neither cares much about their unpopularity. Having committed themselves to politics early in life, they pay little attention to the pop culture that enthralls their fellow classmates.

The two have been politically active for some time, Corbyn as a Young Socialist and May setting her eyes on a seat in parliament at the age of 12. Hers is by necessity a more discreet interest than Corbyn’s. Her father, the vicar, has asked her to keep a low profile at the local Conservative club, fearing that her overt support for the Tory cause might alienate some parishioners. Undeterred, she stuffs envelopes in a back room.

Sitting across the Sixth Form Common Room from Jeremy, Terry is honest enough to admit a grudging regard for her fellow homme serieux. The world of Westminster, not rock ‘n’ roll, is their clarion cry, she recognizes.

But her approval ends there. For the most part, she finds Jeremy insufferable. They are teenagers, hormones surely raging, but there is no hint of a romantic spark between the two. Instead, they consider each other in hostile, sulky silence.

To her distress, Terry has to admit she comes off worst in their bouts at the school debating club, held on Wednesday lunchtimes after double maths — she doesn’t yet know the tables will turn at Prime Minister’s Questions 40 years later.

Indeed, it’s not exactly a fair fight — Jeremy has the luxury of regular practice at home, where his Labour activist parents and three older brothers spar over politics every night. Terry too is encouraged to chew over world affairs at the dinner table; as an only child, she is used to being addressed as an adult by her father and mother. But her natural reticence leaves her tongue-tied when called to speak at debate club. She will soon learn her trade at the Oxford Union, the university’s prestigious debating chamber, but for now, she is still a shy schoolgirl.

As candidates at a school election taking place during the post-war consensus, Terry and Jeremy’s policy platforms are not as far apart as they’ll become in the polarized political age in which they’ll lead their respective parties. But already, their instincts are clearly at odds.

The young May has no interest in Corbyn’s more radical pursuits, such as his interests in nuclear disarmament, animal rights and his opposition to the war in Vietnam. She sees merit in stability, order. She is impatient with the chaos of the three-day week recently imposed by the Heath government, and the accompanying tide of industrial unrest. And the blackouts interfere with Blue Peter on the telly.

The policies Corbyn sets out at the school hustings a week before the election strike Terry as both naïve and dismally statist. He sees her as a fascist in the making.

At least their exchanges are polite and measured. Later, when they are both members of Parliament, colleagues and staff alike will remark that they never hear either of them swear. Of course, at school, that would result in detention and extra homework. It is drilled into them by teachers brought up in Empire to keep their voices low, and to remain unfailingly courteous. Beneath their stiff upper lips, burning resentments might simmer, but they won’t lose control or make a scene.

The day of the election dawns. In the morning, the candidates deliver their final speeches. Everyone but Corbyn concedes that May performs the best. Teachers, struck by her maturity, will remember her remarks many years later. Corbyn, by contrast, fails to capture the attention of his acne-smattered audience.

Where conscientious May has done her homework and prepared well for her moment in the spotlight, dilettante Corbyn, by contrast, had decided to wing it. In their A-levels a few weeks later, Theresa will perform well enough to win a place at Oxford. Jeremy will score two E grades.

The decades that have passed since Teresa and Jeremey stood for student office have done little to shake either one’s opinion of the other. Indeed, the ideological rifts that separated teenage May and Corbyn will be keenly visible in this year’s general election, on June 8.

But there is one key difference. In 1964 and 1974, aspiring politicians Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa Brazier both lost terribly to more popular, and populist, opponents.

This time, one of them will have to win.

Rosa Prince is the author of “Theresa May, the Enigmatic Prime Minister” (Biteback Publishing, 2017) and “Comrade Corbyn” (Biteback Publishing, 2016).