The sudden electoral success of a handful of radical left leaders — Greece’s Alexis Tsipras and Spain’s Pablo Iglesias in the European periphery, and now Jeremy Corbyn in Britain, a heartland of market politics — is more a testament to the hollowing out of the political system than a demonstration of a viable political alternative.

Indeed, even while celebrating Corbyn’s victory — made all the more delightful by its totally unexpected character, not to mention the angry panic it has provoked among the establishment — I can’t help but be haunted by the fate of Tsipras, whose victory was cheered with equal exuberance less than a year ago.

The differences, to be sure, are immense: Tsipras led a young party of which he had been a founder; he faced little opposition from within his party; and in public meetings he acted with the charisma of a conventional populist politician. In the end, though, his problem was that he and his party were in government, not in power. Moreover, as is now clear, Syriza did not have a strategy to build enough power to counter its opponents — both elites throughout the European Union and capitalists in Greece.