There was a time when I thought Labour were far more the party of reliability and integrity. I might even have given Corbyn the benefit of that view though with all the smear campaigns it's hard to know any more.
But here's the thing I would note: Corbyn, when you just see him talking, is an older man talking about kindness, decency, respect, the sort of thing that a leader should be talking about, with a decent dose of socialism - by the people, for the people, with a recognition that people are prepared to pay more in taxes to fund public services. This, of course, is utterly anathema to the cronyist capitalist shysters running the show, and the smear campaigns to discredit him are still running even though he is nowhere near power because they're *that* afraid of him.
I posit that the *relative lack* of such smear campaigns against Starmer are because he's like them, and that his presence as leader of the opposition is tolerated because he's no threat to them precisely because if push came to shove, he is one of them at least in their minds. I like to think he personally has more integrity than that, but it's honestly hard to say. What I do know, beyond speculation, is that it's impossible to really understand what the party stands for any more.
Labour used to be the real 'for the workers' party, the clue is in the name, and for a number of years they were what we would call pretty leftist. Which, compared to America is a very different situation; our centre is quite a bit further left already compared to where America sits. We have almost nothing of the hardcore libertarian right, and our conservative right has none of the rampant theocracy, at least in theory.
The 90s brought a very seismic change to our politics. At the dawn of the decade, Thatcher was in, the Eurosceptic movement was ramping up and her particular breed of selling off the nation's assets wasn't going down so well. Some manuevering happened and she was ousted and replaced with Major - a man so boring, Spitting Image's satirical take on him was to make his wax puppet grey and evangelise how wonderful the peas his wife cooked were. But a young upstart rose through the ranks of the Labour party - Tony Blair. (Spitting Image depicted *him* in a fluffy pink bunny suit bouncing back and forth singing 'I want to be the leader')
1997, the Tories lose to Labour in a landslide. Labour promises to invest in the country ("Education, Education, Education") and brings the message home that the Tories have messed things up pretty badly - their anthem was literally, "Things Can Only Get Better" by D:ream. Blair's government did make some sweeping reforms in their way, and there are many things one can blame them for (PFI is probably my most abiding thought on this subject) but a lot of people felt that this 'New Labour' was much more like the Tories than the 'Old Labour', and that's probably true - but Old Labour, as was, was hardly winning elections. They'd been out of power between 1979 and 1997 - clearly 'for the workers' as a message wasn't working.
I don't really care which of the current Tory candidates wins, they're both awful. The only small hope I have is that they pick Liz and she wrecks the party internally so hard that the Tories are unelectable for a decade. The reality is that what Cameron tried to prevent with the Brexit referendum (which was really the inner conflict of the Tory party between its more centrist/liberal faction and its harder-right faction) is now playing out on the big stage where both candidates know they need to keep their lunatic right on board while trying to not entirely alienate the moderates.
Spoiler: it ain't working, folks.
There are a lot of people rightfully pissed off that this situation is being decided by such a tiny minority of the country - the vote on next PM is down to the 160k Tory members. This should have gone to a general election - I even think under the circumstances an outgoing Labour PM would have made that happen, but Boris knows full well that if he actually called a GE, in the present climate the Tories would be decimated. This show is all about riding out the economic situation (hahah) until it settles down (hahahahhha) for which they will claim 'look at us we fixed it' and reinforce them getting a new victory next time in a GE.
Problem is there's enough people that will keep voting these fucks in.