Jeremy Corbyn, photo: John McDonnellOn September 12 2015 Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party with a landslide of 59.5 percent of the vote. The result was an indictment of New Labour, whose chief representative Liz Kendal took a mere 4.5 percent. In the period between the general election in May and the leadership contest in September over a hundred thousand signed-up to Labour as registered supporters while almost twice that amount joined as full members. The election revealed an appetite for a “new kind of politics” pitched far from the moderate centre-ground that Labour’s dominant intellectual forces considered political common sense.
Commentary on the flood of new energies into Labour was divided: for progressives Corbyn’s support represented new organic constituencies and contemporary political tendencies in British society far less moderate than Labour’s Fabians and Blairites had imagined, while for commentators close to the Party’s ruling elites the surge was a case of unfortunate opportunism by Labour’s perennial socialist militants, back after two decades of isolation.
The new politics
Labour’s influx of Corbyn supporters contradicts the trend of long term decline in political party membership with Labour currently the biggest left-wing political party in Europe, composed of over 550,000 members and supporters.
