WHEN the new Labour leader was announced one September Sunday, the jaw-dropping result ricocheted around the world.

To disbelief, the party of Tony Blair and Harold Wilson had elected a far-left leader, a self-declared Socialist demanding an end to all austerity – with a beard.

As Jeremy Corbyn raised a clenched fist for the cameras, horrified fellow Labour MPs were already plotting how to remove a man they considered a vote-losing liability.

During the race, a Corbyn aide had admitted Labour would split if his man won - triggering the birth of a “new SDP” - and now that split seemed certain.

As the party searched for culprits, attention focused on a Commons vote nearly two months earlier which had exposed Labour as a disorganised, backbiting rabble.

On July 20, 48 Labour MPs – including eight in the North-East - had stuck two fingers up to interim leader Harriet Harman by voting against the Government’s brutal benefit cuts.

To bewilderment and anger, Ms Harman had first announced Labour would support much of the package, then tabled an amendment opposing the Bill – then ordered her MPs to abstain.

That was too much to stomach for many Labour MPs alarmed by independent warnings that at least £1,000 a year would be snatched from three million poor families.

The leadership favourites – Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper – had been placed in the impossible position of observing Shadow Cabinet unity, while seething at Ms Harman’s monumental incompetence.

Into the vacuum stepped Mr Corbyn, hailed a hero by Labour activists for his principled revolt – a wave he rode all the way to his shock September triumph….

It couldn’t happen, could it? That the party Tony Blair led to three election victories could turn to a man who looks to Che Guevara for inspiration?

Well, a Times poll yesterday suggested it will and my Labour contacts are not ruling it out –some suspecting Mr Corbyn will be ahead on first preferences, before losing on vote transfers.

Even that result would have huge consequences, probably handing him a big job and allowing gleeful Tories to portray him as the party’s true choice.

And, if it happens, it will undoubtedly be the consequence of recent days, of Labour’s astonishing disarray and self-inflicted wounds.

I’m told Labour members are being driven into the arms of Mr Corbyn, once the 100-1 outsider, in fury at their party’s inept leadership,

Now, there is no doubt that whoever wins must change course dramatically on tax, spending, welfare and so much else to reflect May’s stunning election defeat.

By 2020, tax credits will have been dismantled – tragically, with no alternative poverty-reduction strategy to replace them – so Labour must start from scratch, with radical rethinking.

But neither Tony Blair nor David Cameron were expected to rip up a manifesto before they were even elected leader, by a bungling interim leader.

No, they triumphed by convincingly promising change, by arguing “values” were sound, but voters were not listening and it was vital to find out why – not by telling a shell-shocked party to dump what it campaigned for a few months’ earlier.

The inevitable consequence was Monday night, a laughing stock Labour party screaming at itself, while a grinning George Osborne can’t believe his luck.

Thus, Stormin’ Corbyn marches on…