In spite of his recent successes in the polls, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t likely to reach 10 Downing Street. He’s a dinosaur in more ways than one, twenty years older than his nearest rival, his politics more often compared to Tony Benn than Tony Blair. Incidentally, given the state of the party’s finances, I can only hope Blair waived his usual £250,000 speaking fee when addressing all those think tanks.

Despite the odds, I’m supporting Corbyn, for the same reason I support the surprisingly successful campaign of Bernie Sanders in the USA. While Bernie’s likely to get steamrolled by the fundraising juggernaut that is Hillary Clinton, his mere presence is valuable, because he voices positions no other politician will – a living wage, free college education, and nationalised healthcare.

Likewise, Corbyn seems to be the only man in a supposedly socialist party who’s willing to stray left of centre with any conviction. Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper have tried, but their efforts are typified by Burnham’s staunch opposition to the recent welfare bill – which he opposed by refusing to vote against it. The one nice thing I can say about Liz Kendall is that she hasn’t even bothered to pretend to be left-wing.

Corbyn, meanwhile, is the only convincingly 'Labour' candidate, which explains why the rest are tripping over themselves to denounce him and return to a creeping compromise with the Tories. In the same breath, they insist he’s unelectable while bemoaning his poll lead. The right of the party is attempting to cast him as a candidate of the 1980s, not the twenty-first century, a “reactionary” leftist whose supporters are simply misguided. Or, as one of Blair’s former aides so tactfully put it, "morons".

All of this seems to suggest that Labour’s right wing, rather than learning from defeat, is burying its head in the sand. They insist Ed Miliband lost because he was too radical, not too moderate. They point to Blair’s victory, against John Major’s dismal economic record, as an example of how to beat the economically successful David Cameron. Most tellingly, Blair himself blames “nationalism” for the loss in Scotland, despite Scots rejecting the nationalist platform less than a year ago. Labour lost in Scotland, not because the SNP appealed to nationalism, but because the SNP offered an alternative to Tory austerity.

The idea that Corbyn is out of touch with the British public is laughable. His radical policy of re-nationalisation – of the railways, specifically – is backed by 60 per cent of the public, even many Tory voters. Six in ten Brits support rent controls, while less than one in ten actively oppose them. Six in ten again back a living wage, and five in ten a cut in tuition fees. These are all stated positions of Corbyn’s. Even the far-out idea of nuclear disarmament – the ideal, if not the practical reality – draws 64 per cent of the public’s support.

Perhaps the most notable feature of Corbyn’s campaign has been the youth of his supporters. Those young activists, for good or ill, don’t carry the baggage of the 1980s. For them, the next five years will be most decisive, not the last thirty. In the next few months, George Osbourne is set to roll out up to 40 per cent cuts for most government departments, Michael Gove will be applying all his usual grace and dignity in dismantling the Human Rights Act, and Ian Duncan Smith no longer has an impediment in his efforts to rack up the biggest body count he can. While the Tories boast about papering over the cracks in our economy, Corbyn is the only political figure filling the void of the late Mr Benn and the late Mr Kennedy, pointing out the human misery attached to the Tories' social policies.

That’s why I support Jeremy Corbyn. Someone needs to be pointing it out. Most likely, he won't become Prime Minister – he might manage to nudge Burnham or Cooper a little further left, or to steward the party through a period of noisy opposition. Whatever the result, Labour needs to come away from this leadership contest asking why so many people are supporting a dinosaur like Corbyn.

Maybe, just maybe, he will have been saying what they were all thinking.