Corbyn election heralds a new era for UK politics

World of Politics with Harry McGee – harrymcgee@gmail.com

I’m sure very few Irish people – other than those who wear their anoraks to bed – were aware of Jeremy Corbyn before he entered the British Labour Party leadership campaign this summer.

Now he is leader of the Labour Party after a phenomenal campaign in which he routed his opponents, winning by even a bigger majority than Tony Blair 20 years ago.

So who is he? Well, he’s a veteran, now in his mid 60s. He is a left-winger and has never, until now, served on the Labour front bench. He seems a conscientious and decent man but his views are very radical in the context of the status quo – EU critical; strongly anti-austerity, republican; and anti-nuclear.

Now some of his rivals claimed that because anyone who handed over £3 was entitled to participate in the leadership election, the result was spiked because a whole pile of militants (and Tory saboteurs) became instant members so as to wreck the Labour Party for a generation.

There might be a small smidgen of truth in that but Corbyn won all the electoral college suggesting a majority of people who consider themselves Labour in Britain supported him. That included the unions but also ordinary members of the party. The one chapel in which he is a minority is the Labour parliamentary party where his leadership has become really divisive.

Why did Corbyn win? Well, the obvious answer is that it is a reaction to the inefficacy of Labour in opposition. Ed Miliband’s election as leader was influenced by the unions who backed him rather than his more New Labour brother David.

But Ed’s leadership was also a moderate one – the party’s critiques of Tory policies was hard to explain and, ergo, hard to differentiate sufficiently from the Conservatives. In other words, the alternative was not spelled out clearly enough.

None of the three other candidates who put themselves up for leadership – Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham, or Liz Kendall – were really in a position to offer a new way, a new politics. It seems the perception among the Labour electorate is that these guys just offered more of the same.

Step forward Corbyn. He has always been on the militant left wing of the party, a consistent and wayward critic. Until now, he could have been likened to Napoleon in Animal Farm, the donkey who knows the faults of the rulers, can articulate them in a cynical and fatal style, but really does nothing about them.

It must be remembered that Corbyn just about gathered the required number of signatures from fellow MPs to enter the race, showing how little purchase his world view has within the parliamentary party.

But his campaign prospered because as well as the old reliable of the left-wingers in the party, he got backing form the largest and most hard-line union, Unite, as well as from a large and committed new group of energised active, who were no longer satisfied with Labour following predictable patterns in the manner in which it opposed the Tories.

For more, read this week’s Connacht Tribune.