JEREMY Corbyn’s election to the leadership of Britain’s main opposition Labour party is all the more surprising given how British politics tends toward pragmatism, leaving outsiders on the outside.
While Syriza took power in Greece and Podemos have surged in popularity in Spain, it is quite a turn of events that Britain’s mainstream party of the left is now led by one of their comrades.
In Britain, pragmatism is supposedly the key to winning elections, which are usually won by capturing floating voters in the center ground. This point was reiterated by Labour's former Prime Minister Tony Blair following the party’s thrashing at the May general election.
He called for Labour to reverse the leftward drift of Ed Miliband’s leadership since 2010, in order to recapture the moderate electorate. However, “rather than compromise with the voters, Labour has lurched even further to the left,” wrote commentator Fraser Nelson in The Daily Telegraph newspaper. “We’re witnessing a suicidal charge of the red brigade.”
After five years of Conservative-led spending reductions in a bid to balance the nation’s finances, voters in the Labour leadership race have decided that the platform offered by Corbyn’s three rivals for the leadership offered only a watered-down version of Prime Minister David Cameron’s program. Instead they have been swayed by the soothing words of Corbyn.
“He has an alternative mindset, a world view which is about caring and cooperating rather than competing and being aspirational,” said Barry Smith, a 72-year-old retired nurse who left Labour after the war in Iraq but has rejoined due to Corbyn’s campaign.
Using a vocabulary reliant on “hope,” “peace” and “compassion,” Corbyn has seduced both disgruntled former Labour supporters and disaffected young voters.
Labour lawmaker Jon Cruddas, Miliband’s policy coordinator, said his mother and son had both rejoined the party in order to vote. “They are enthused by something that’s going on in and around Labour,” he said. Since Labour’s defeat in May, the number of people able to vote in the Labour leadership election has swelled from around 200,000 to nearly 600,000.
New election rules mean people can sign up as registered supporters for £3 ($4.60, 4.10 euros) and get a vote. A study by pollsters YouGov found that the newcomers were more likely to be Corbyn supporters than actual party members. That adds weight to the notion that member of Parliament for London’s Islington North seat is able to connect with hitherto disinterested or disaffected voters. But to extrapolate that Corbyn’s victory shows Britain has swung off to the left — four months after re-electing Cameron’s Conservatives — is going a step too far, according to experts.
“The relatively few people eligible to vote in the Labour leadership election... are not remotely representative of the rest of the country,” said YouGov’s Freddie Sayer.
Some Labour figures have voiced concern that supporters of leftist fringe parties — plus mischievous Conservative voters — signed up to vote in Corbyn. YouGov’s analysis has bolstered those who insist that with Corbyn in charge, Labour has no chance of reclaiming power in 2020. “The program Jeremy Corbyn offers is not new,” said defeated leadership rival Liz Kendall, the most centrist of the other three candidates. “His policies and politics are the same now as they were in the 1980s — and will end up delivering the same result.”
After Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher won power in 1979, Labour offered a leftist program and were even more heavily defeated. The Conservatives continued in power until 1997. Labour won three straight elections under Blair, in 1997, 2001 and 2005.
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AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE
