The recent election of Jeremy Corbyn, the MP from Islington in Northern London who is known to espouse so-called way-out socialist causes, as the new leader of the British Labour Party, has jolted the Western world.
Mr Corbyn stunned everyone, not just his opponents in the leadership stakes, by winning 60 per cent of the electoral college vote. This translates to more than half a million voters, which is rather more than the votes a winner collects in a typical constituency for British Parliament. No Western leader has come to head his party with such landslide support.
The victory of the most committed Leftist ever to lead Labour is widely considered a win for value politics. Through his election Mr Corbyn emphasised the policies he favours, rather than duck to attract votes. His programme is to take Britain out of Nato, scrap Britain’s nuclear deterrent Trident and save 100 billion pound sterling, pull out of West Asia wars, denationalise railways, and restore public health and education.
The new Labour leader is expected to have a hard time to persuade his own MPs to share his policy perspectives as they are generally New Labour and close to the market agenda that Mr Corbyn opposes.
Will he be jettisoned by his party before the next general election, which is five years away? Can Labour win in national polls under a socialist-style leader? These are the imponderables for now, but the Corbyn victory has set the cat among the pigeons among social democrats across Europe.
