A perhaps
stunning victory for a party frustrated with recent defeats, and with perhaps the infusion of underrepresented elements,
the leadership of the UK Labour Party has risen/fallen in a 59% vote for a repudiation of the Tony Blair New Labour faction which during its history so often emulated a triangulating US political party often driven by focus groups and polling and ambivalent on issues of austerity as well as devolution of regional power. Whether this is a cautionary tale for the US Democratic party remains to be seen, since 2020 is when Jeremy Corbyn's leadership will be truly tested.
We entered this contest to ensure there was a real political alternative put to the status quo of austerity and a society skewed towards the super-rich. Every one of us has been part of that - whether by sharing a Facebook post or talking about these ideas with friends and colleagues. We have put the case for the fairer, more democratic and decent society we all strive for. This work must continue.
It's probably more like the hypothetical if Barbara Lee became US House minority leader or Bernie became Senate minority leader, but it does signal something about popular dissatisfaction for neoliberal policies or centrist tendencies, as this parodic tweet suggests
Few, if anyone, gave Jeremy Corbyn much chance when he scraped on to the list of Labour leadership candidates in June. Not the MPs backing him. Not the media. Not the bookies. Not even his own small campaign team.
One of the key figures in that team, Kat Fletcher, did go into a betting shop in London’s Holloway Road to put £20 on him early on. The odds were 100-1.
In spite of that bet, Fletcher, the deputy mayor of Islington in London, admitted this week she did not place it with any sense of confidence. “To be honest, the bet was an act of solidarity,” she said. “It was so I could tell Jeremy that I had backed him.”
Corbyn has defied not only Fletcher’s expectations but everyone else’s. He has come from the fringes of Labour politics, where people still proudly describe themselves as socialists and refer to one another as comrade, to lead one of the biggest grassroots political uprisings in the UK in recent times, a movement that has taken him to the verge of becoming party leader.
It all goes to show that our own James O'Keefe is simply not coughing up the bucks to do his dirty work
Andy Burnham’s team said they would refer the Sun newspaper to the regulator Ipso after an undercover reporter from the tabloid posing as a potential donor recorded him saying Jeremy Corbyn would be a disaster for the Labour party.....During the Sun’s sting, an undercover journalist posing as a wealthy foreign donor gave £5,000 to Faiz ul Rasool, a businessman and Labour party donor, who arranged for him to meet Burnham.
Meanwhile, the media will have fun with old cliché
parodies about the Left.
More interesting will be what his Shadow Cabinet will look like, with the possibility of real back-bencher rhetoric confronting the Tories in the House of Commons. This may in fact allow many previously anti-Corbyn MPs to be more thoughtful in how they represent their constituencies. Needless to say, how members of the US Democratic party select their leadership has less than a family resemblance.
During his three decades in parliament, Corbyn has spent much of his time championing causes such as the Stop the War coalition, campaigning against the private finance initiative and supporting peace efforts in the Middle East.
In the campaign, he promised to give Labour members a much greater say in the party’s policymaking process, in a move that could sideline MPs. His key proposals include renationalisation of the railways, apologising for Labour’s role in the Iraq war, quantitative easing to fund infrastructure, opposing austerity, controlling rents and creating a national education service.
He is also likely to prove an obstacle to David Cameron’s ambition to launch airstrikes on Syria, although some Labour MPs could defy the whip to vote with the government.
"This is not even like Michael Foot leading Labour in the 80s, or Iain Duncan Smith in charge of us a decade or so ago," one Conservative minister mused to me the other day.
"They were both serious men. It'd be like us electing..." he went on, before discreetly namechecking a handful of colleagues he would place in the "nutter" category.
Yet Tony Benn may be still proved correct as Corbyn tries to establish party discipline upon moving from the back benches:
How "the Civil Service can frustrate the policies and decisions of popularly elected governments";
The centralised nature of the Labour Party allowing to the Leader to run "the Party almost as if it were his personal kingdom"
"The power of industrialists and bankers to get their way by use of the crudest form of economic pressure, even blackmail, against a Labour Government"; and
The power of the media, which "like the power of the medieval Church, ensures that events of the day are always presented from the point of the view of those who enjoy economic privilege.