Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn becomes new leader of UK Labour Party
Amidst all the many threads about US politics, I think it's reasonable to look at a potentially significant UK development as well. I didn't really want to put 'left-winger' in the title, btw, as that makes it sound like an attack. but that's actually a faintly shameless way of trying to attract attention.
So, some points here about a. what is going on and b. why it matters. Hopefully you have the patience to read it through.
1. As I am sure many of you know, we recently had a general election in the UK (that's the big election where who is in government is determined) and, catching pretty much everyone by surprise, the relatively right-wing Conservative party not only won but won strongly enough to stand alone, not needing anyone else to partner up with. They had been in coalition with the centrist Liberal Democrats after failing to win outright last time, and getting another coalition had been assumed to be the best they would hope for this time- but they outperformed even their own best projections.
On an international stage this is important as the Conservative party broadly supports US foreign policy. It's no longer absolute (the UK parliament shot down Syrian intervention even in theory) but it's definitely there, and noticeably Obama's rhetoric towards the UK changed from rather distant in his first term to suddenly gushing in his second as the US became increasingly keen on keeping the UK on-side, particularly as US relations with Europe are not great right now (the Snowden scandal has hit German relations hard, and the Ukraine situation is causing trouble as well). So, the Conservative victory was welcome in the US.
2. The Labour party- left-wing (supposedly) opponents to the Conservatives and less well inclined towards the US (Blair was Labour but it was different in his day) was led by Ed Miliband, who had shifted his party somewhat leftwards in an attempt to distance from Blair and the Conservatives. his tactic clearly failed as he got trashed (in a separate development, they got destroyed in Scotland by nationalists- but they pretty much failed in England as well). Miliband hence resigned and the hunt was on for a new Labour leader that could meet the newly reinvigorated Conservatives.
3. The Labour party has a strong association with unions in the UK, and Ed Miliband only ever became leader (beating his own brother) because of the slightly unfair power of the Union block vote. The public is often suspicious of union power. Ed himself changed the rules whilst leader to make all registered Labour party members get a vote on candidates nominated by the parliamentary party so the unions could no longer have such influence.
4. With this system in place, the parliamentary Labour party produced several new candidates for leader. A bunch of them were very boring types ranging from dull Blairite copies to even duller Miliband-a-likes. But almost as an afterthought, they also nominated Jeremy Corbyn, one of the last remaining truly left-wing Labour MPs, a relic of the old days when Labour was a very left-wing socialist party that lost elections a lot, only becoming electable again in the 90s when they got rid of that power block. Corbyn was nominated almost as a joke- many of those who nominated him didn't want him, but they thought it would be 'fair' to include all views in the leadership contest. He was a fringe candidate just there to add a voice.
5. The problem is, where all the other candidates were dull and uninspiring, Corbyn is a great public speaker with a soft-spoken personality. He has the man-of-the-people look, wearing vests under his shirt and constantly using public transport. He spoke about ending austerity, re-nationalising public services, nuclear disarmament, general pacifism (he says he can imagine no possibility in which he would send troops abroad)- in short, stuff very, very different from the standard political spectrum right now. Before long, he was commanding (relatively) large rallies of people where all the mainstream candidates were being totally ignored.
6. Because of the new system for electing leaders, as I say, all party members get a vote- and suddenly, tens of thousands of new people suddenly joined the Labour party to vote for Corbyn. Rumour has it even Conservative party members were joining to get him elected on the idea that he will kill the Labour party. When it suddenly became clear that Corbyn might win, the parliamentary party entered total panic- one of those who nominated him for appearances only admitted she had been a total moron. Corbyn has virtually no support at all amongst the elected party- but because of the election rules, he was in a position to win leadership of it.
7. As of today, the party nightmare has become true. Totally unknown three months ago, Corbyn has stormed to victory with 60% of the vote and now leads the Labour party. Which means, if Labour win a general election, Corbyn would become the Prime Minister.
This is an inverted Donald Trump- the joke candidate who suddenly has a very real shot at power, devastating the centre ground of the party- except where Trump is over on the right, Corbyn comes all the way in on the left.
Corbyn is a true, hardcore socialist who has faced questions over, for example, his links to anti-Israeli organisations, paramilitary organisations in Northern Ireland and former communist leaders in Eastern Europe. He openly admits the significance of Karl Marx's political work, and that's almost unheard of in political leaders these days.
In short, for all you socialist haters out there, Corbyn represents everything you hate- the antithesis of your political views, but wrapped up in an agreeable personality (so he's not THAT much like Trump...). As such, the possibility he might become PM scares the shit out the US administration because he would destroy the US' current best link into Europe.
Now, the political reality almost certainly is that Corbyn is unelectable and the Labour party has just shot itself. Nonetheless, for the first time in decades, we now have a major voice in UK politics advocating far left policies. WIth US sentiment in Europe at a a delicate point, this is very significant for international politics.
He's also not a big fan of the EU because he feels they betrayed the workers in Greece. Right now he's backing Euyrope but that could change; if anti-EU sentiment takes hold in BOTH UK mainstream parties (the Conservatives are generally sceptical), than the UK is almost certainly going to leave the EU.
In any case, rather like Trump, the big point is that he's actually made politics a bit interesting, hence all the people signing up to vote for him.
Big times ahead; US presidential candidates will be keeping a close tab in this one, if they have any sense.
Word also has it that Europe is shifting to the left in general- is this the experience from other Europeans here?
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Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 14th, 2015 at 09:23 AM
Don't worry, we'll "take care" of this uppity fellow. Does Mr. Corbyn like milkshakes?
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Re: Left-winger Jeremy Corbyn becomes new leader of UK Labour Party
So, I don't follow German politics as closely, because they are dreadfully boring (did you know that our parliament doesn't yell and boo regularly? Where's the entertainment value?). But Merkel has been moving our conservative party more to the center, adopting a lot of the talking points of the more left leaning party, which some say is part of her success, she's really not very controversial (something like 60+ percent of people usually approve of her). Now, while that is a move to the left for the conservative party, I'm not sure it is a move to the left in the way you meant, I don't know if the more extreme left movements really have a much bigger draw in German politics. To be honest it seems more like they have gotten less so, and partisan politics have gotten less severe (of course they still disagree, but I guess with a "great coalition, i.e. Germany's two biggest parties together in power, that makes a lot of sense).
Mind you, with the Conservatives having just won an election in the UK, it is pretty odd to say it's going left-wing; the vote this year was MORE right-wing than the last election. Corbyn just got a quarter of a million people to vote him in as Labour leader but he has an electorate of closer to 50 million to try and convince if he wants to be PM.
I don't think anyone seriously thinks Corbyn can do it (he has, incidentally, never held any sort of official position in his party and he has no administrative experience- for that matter, he had to be persuaded to run for leader; he had no particular ambitions in that way) but it is the extent to which he will now give voice to certain opinions, like the unions and general disarmament (he's praised Costa Rica for having no army).
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So, the next election is only in 5 years. Are there any methods in the Labour party to change their leadership until then? Additionally, does the leader of the party necessarily have to be the candidate for the Prime Minister spot?
Yes he does- the leader of the party has to go to the Queen to ask permission to form a government, and hence becomes her Prime Minister (before anyone goes crazy nuts there, that's just ceremonial).
There are several mechanisms to remove him. It only takes 20% of Labour MPs (46 right now) to force a leadership challenge, and seeing as when the original nominations from MPs came, Corbyn had fewer than 20 backing him out of 232 (before others were asked to lend him a nomination to 'broaden the debate'), getting that number will be extremely easy. Virtually no-one in the parliamentary party wants Corbyn and nearly all the front bench spokesmen for the party (the people who would become Ministers and what-not if Labour won) resigned when he won.
The thing is, if there is anything worse than having Corbyn as leader as far as publicity goes, it would be immediately knifing your own leader when he just got a huge democratic mandate under rules your own party had introduced very recently. It's the kind of thing you have to take on the chin, really. For sure, after Corbyn goes, they'll change the rules again so it something like this can never re-occur.
They will wait for some practical moment to strike- we have Scottish and Local elections next year to test how Labour polls. A rebel group known as 'Labour for the Common Good' has already been started and Labour's biggest individual financial backer has already switched his funding to them rather than the main party.
Of course, Corbyn can fight back. He likely has the local party mechanisms on his side- and what the local party groups do is nominate who stands for MP. In theory, he could force current MPs to be de-selected so they would not be able to stand as Labour MPs at the next election.
__________________
"We've got maybe seconds before Darth Rosenberg grinds everybody into Jawa burgers and not one of you buds has the midi-chlorians to stop her!"
"You've never had any TINY bit of sex, have you?"
BtVS
Last edited by Ushgarak on Sep 15th, 2015 at 10:22 AM
Interesting to see that a proper red is part of the left governments that are taking Europe by storm. Spain's left got a few licks gaining the mayor élections on their two biggest cities, and of course we all know Greece is in the hands of the left as well.
For the time being France is leaning towards the Right, the biggest candidate outside the system is the daughter of Le Pen, who you might remember as the underdog who defeated the Socialists and that got Chirac elected in the second round by a healthy 80% margin of votes. In France the left is fragmented and almost non-existant and the more realistic option Inside the systems is starting in the form of a center-aligned candidate from the right (or from the left, if the current Prime Minister sneaks out of the shadow of the current president at some point).
French politics are known for featuring outsider candidates with a relative chunk of the electorate on big élections, so technically nothing new is under the sun. If anything, the center candidate is set to win the next election very easily, with the Socialist electorate voting against Le Pen by default.
I find the Tory reaction interesting, as if he was the worst thing ever.
These'd be good.
What happened with the British railroad was a joke. It was working, they privatized it, got more big accidents, and then started pouring in more money than it ever got when it was nationalized in order to pretend that privatization worked.
Corbyn will hopefully redress the balance of four decades of right centre politics in the U.K. but it is early days and yes, New Labour were right centre. Thatcher even stated her greatest achievement was New Labour, the shifting of the Labour Party to the centre right. An opposition which does not oppose as with the recent vote "Welfare vote" is no opposition and has no point. Austerity does not work and Brown was not to blame for the Banking Crash, the global banking crash.
By the modern political spectrum of the U.K. he is, from a postwar Socialist perspective, where all the great things like the NHS and Welfare state were created, he really isn't. It's just the powers that be have homogenised the spectrum so Kendall is interchangeable with a Tory wet who is interchangeable with Nick Clegg etc.
He's considerably to the left of Attlee. who took an aggressive stance on international relations. Corbyn is a pacifist and pro-Russian (once pro-Soviet). Attlee, an anti-communist, was big on re-interpreting socialist principles in a British flavour, whilst Corbyn openly sings Marx's praises.
Corbyn's brand of left-wing politics is of a strength that there has never been a point in British politics where he would not have been seen as radical. Outside of Sinn Fein (also radical), he is about as left wing an MP as there has ever been. His is precisely the sort of politics that doomed the Labour party in the 70s and 80s- not because of some right-shifting conspiracy by your vague 'powers that be', but because the public always hated it.
Basically, if Corbyn is not radical, the term no longer has any meaning.
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Sep 12th, 2015 05:36 PM
