In the UK, one candidate for leader of the center-left Labour Party – a position that usually competes for Prime Minister in general elections – is actually on the left.

His name is Jeremy Corbyn and a ‘Jez We Can’ movement has developed around his candidacy. It looks like he’s set to become the next Labour Party leader, with the election winner announced on 12 September. He also stands a chance at becoming the next leader of the country – but he would have no chance in the US.

For the past two decades the Labour Party’s right turn has led them to support government spending cuts and anti-immigration policies. Like Bernie Sanders running against Hilary Clinton, no one really expected very much from Corbyn’s run for leader. But polls show that Corbyn is in the lead and is ahead by a fairly large margin.

Since news of his lead competing leadership candidates have worked together to attack Corbyn and his supporters. The openness of the leadership elections have led to calls of far-left ‘entryists’ signing up to vote for Corbyn. The party has initiated a process of purging voters who “do not support the aims and values of the Labour Party”, but so far have only spotted around 3,000 – that’s out of over 600,000 that have sought to participate in the leadership elections. This is a number that has grown dramatically as Corbyn’s popularity increased.

Commentators and Labour Party higher-ups have warned voters that Corbyn is unelectable in a general election, calling his anti-austerity economic policies “deeply flawed”. This is despite many economists, including a former advisor to the Bank of England, saying otherwise. Left-leaning columnists for the left-leaning Guardian newspaper have also attacked Corbyn. Former Labour Party Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown had both called on voters to rethink their position and vote for a more ‘viable’ candidate, with Blair going so far as to suggest “when people say ‘well my heart says I should really [support Corbyn]’, well get a transplant because that’s just daft”.

The majority of negative comments against Corbyn are around this issue of ‘electability’. According to these naysayers, Corbyn cannot win because his views are too far left. Corbyn believes that government spending can help the UK economy. He believes important industries need to be nationalized and their goods and services made affordable. He believes in what the Labour Party originally stood for: a more prosperous working class. Nevertheless he is attacked by his own party who fear that the rest of the public will not support his policies, that the majority of the public are centrist, and that they want a strong leader whose economic policies are ‘sensible’.

But there is good reason to be sceptical of the argument that Corbyn is unelectable. First, the next general election is scheduled for 2020 – giving a long window in which the Labour Party can convince the public that his anti-austerity policies are in fact sensible – something the Party decided to not try and do in the last election.

Second, Corbyn has been able to attract large numbers of voters to the Labour Party, people who have likely not voted for Labour in previous elections because they the party not appear much different than the center-right Conservative Party.

Third, the public – even those who did not vote Labour in the last election – prefer Corbyn to any other Labour candidate. In fact, over 23% of undecided voters and nearly 19% of those intending to vote Conservative were more likely to vote Labour if Corbyn was the party’s leader. Those percentages increase when we talk about those polled who were intending to vote for the Liberal Democrats (34%) or UK Independence Party (33%). This suggests that the average person doesn’t think along a strict left-right spectrum and that a more left-wing your candidate doesn’t mean automatically losing the ‘middle ground’.

Finally, unlike the claims made by his opponents the public actually supports a large number of Corbyn’s ‘far left’ policies. These include renationalizing important industries, increasing taxes on the wealthiest, banning nuclear weapons, rent control, a mandatory living wage, and cuts to tuition fees.

People seem to like Corbyn because he provides a sense of hope and a sense of change – ideas that helped Obama become President (even if his tenure in office did not deliver on those promises). Such ideas bring in new voters and can also draw in undecided voters.

In a word, Corbyn does seem to be electable.

This mismatch between what the majority of the Labour Party is saying about Corbyn and what the polls show suggests that it’s not Corbyn’s chances of winning that they fear, but Corbyn’s policies themselves – policies that the Labour Party has moved away from. This challenges the idea that a political party will bureaucratize, lose interest in its policies, and only seek to be re-elected. Instead it seems to show that politics matter and, simply put, most Labour MPs no longer represent the interests of labor.

Corbyn has a good chance to win the leadership election but even if he wins he will face quite a difficult challenge in convincing other Labour members of parliament to support his ideas. But winning the leadership election is already something. And it’s something that the US will not have a chance to experience without reforming the electoral system first.

Unlike the UK, US elections are effectively bought. In the 2012 US general election campaign each party tried to outspend the other – with total spending on the election surpassing previous records and reaching about $6 billion. In comparison the 2010 UK general elections saw all parties spend a total of £31.1m. This means that in order to win an election in the US candidates must not only impress the public with their policies and charm, but also secure the approval of businesses who have a lot of money to spend. Such regulatory, renationalization, and pro-labor policies promoted by Corbyn are unlikely to attract sympathy from big business – even if the public supports the policies. So if you rely on big business to win elections, a real left candidate is indeed unelectable.

While the UK’s Labour Party will have a bumpy road ahead, getting money out of politics is a priority and a necessary (but perhaps insufficient) condition for there to be any real signs of ‘hope’ and ‘change’ in the US.

Eugene Nulman is a Lecturer in Sociology at Birmingham City University where he researches social movements and their outcomes. He is the author of the book Climate Change and Social Movements: Civil Society and the Development of National Climate Change Policy and is a member of the International Organization for a Participatory Society (IOPS).