But Corbyn also embodies a different fantasy: The dream of a world without political realities. Corbyn doesn’t want to speak to the “mainstream” media. He’s already canceled an interview with the BBC, although he has in the past spoken to Iran’s Press TV and Russia Today, and is refusing to answer questions from others. He doesn’t like Prime Minister’s Question Time, the traditional forum for British parliamentary debate. His closest ally, now Labour’s shadow chancellor, declared a few months ago that “you can’t change the world through the parliamentary system,” an extraordinary comment for an elected official. Tony Blair, the last Labour prime minister to win an election (in fact he won three of them), has even observed with astonishment that neither Corbyn nor the activists — less than 1 percent of the voting public — who selected him in the internal Labour party ballot even want to talk about how the new leader will fare in a national ballot. Last month Blair wrote that a friend told him not to bring up the issue: “[D]on’t blah on about winning elections; it really offends them.”

Corbyn and his allies say they don’t like “politics as usual”; but in fact, what they really don’t like is democratic politics, with its compromises and its negotiations, its tedious decision-making process, its inevitable drift toward centrism and, of course, the annoying voters, journalists, opposition politicians and others who ask difficult questions. Nor do they like democratic politicians, in Britain, the United States or anywhere else, preferring the company of Venezuelan populists or radicals funded by Iran. In parliament for more than 30 years, Corbyn has voted against his own party hundreds of times. While colleagues were grappling with real decisions and hard questions, coping with bureaucracy and negotiating with allies, he stayed on the sidelines, preferring to remain ideologically pure. This week, he refused to sing the national anthem.