Britain’s Labour heads in a more progressive direction with new anti-austerity Leader

This is a big, big deal. Via The Wall Street Jour­nal:

Jere­my Cor­byn, a far-left for­mer union orga­niz­er, was elect­ed the leader of the U.K.’s Labour Par­ty on Sat­ur­day, a result that sig­nals a more social­ist direc­tion for the country’s main oppo­si­tion and could her­ald a realign­ment of British politics.

The 66-year-old law­mak­er, long on the mar­gins of British pol­i­tics, secured a con­vinc­ing vic­to­ry with 59.5% of votes, win­ning 170,955 more than his clos­est rival. Mr. Corbyn’s anti­aus­ter­i­ty, anti­war and egal­i­tar­i­an mes­sage ener­gized thou­sands of grass-roots sup­port­ers who had become dis­il­lu­sioned with the party.

Mr. Cor­byn will now have to try to unite a par­ty that is deeply divid­ed, a sit­u­a­tion laid bare by infight­ing dur­ing the lead­er­ship con­test. Fol­low­ing the party’s crush­ing defeat in May’s gen­er­al elec­tion, Labour mem­bers and politi­cians have bat­tled over whether to tack left or claim the cen­ter ground in the foot­steps of Tony Blair, its longest-serv­ing prime minister.

The Guardian notes:

He won with near­ly 59.5% of first-pref­er­ence votes, beat­ing rivals Andy Burn­ham, who trailed on 19%, and Yvette Coop­er who received 17%. The “Blairite” can­di­date Liz Kendall came last on 4.5%.

Min­utes after his vic­to­ry, Cor­byn said the mes­sage is that peo­ple are “fed up with the injus­tice and the inequal­i­ty” of Britain.

“The media and many of us, sim­ply didn’t under­stand the views of young peo­ple in our coun­try. They were turned off by the way pol­i­tics was being con­duct­ed. We have to and must change that. The fight­back gath­ers speed and gath­ers pace,” he said.

Tom Wat­son was elect­ed as the par­ty’s deputy leader.

The BBC has a chronol­o­gy of reac­tion to Cor­byn’s win, which is well put-togeth­er.

Cor­byn will need to form a new lead­er­ship team, because sev­en Labour front­benchers led by Coop­er (evi­dent­ly sulk­ing after her loss) have declared they will not serve in Cor­byn’s shad­ow cab­i­net. (A shad­ow cab­i­net con­sists of those lead­ers of the Queen’s Oppo­si­tion who would step into min­is­te­r­i­al roles if the oppo­si­tion were to become the gov­ern­ing par­ty as a result of snap elections.)

This could be for the best… it will allow Cor­byn to form a lead­er­ship team that believes in his vision and direc­tion for the Labour Party.

Cor­byn’s vic­to­ry is a pro­found moment in British pol­i­tics. It sig­nals that Labour is final­ly step­ping out of the shad­ow of Tony Blair and will more aggres­sive­ly chal­lenge the Tories of the Unit­ed King­dom, led by cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter David Cameron. Labour’s fail­ure to dis­tin­guish itself from Cameron’s aus­ter­i­ty poli­cies arguably con­tributed to its very poor show­ing in the last elec­tion under Ed Miliband.

Miliband, inci­den­tal­ly, is call­ing on his par­ty to unite around Cor­byn, say­ing that is appro­pri­ate for Cor­byn’s rivals to respect his big mandate.

Labour’s estab­lish­ment did not want Cor­byn, and over­whelm­ing­ly pre­ferred oth­er can­di­dates, but the par­lia­men­tary fac­tion of the par­ty was over­ruled by the par­ty’s base. That is a great thing to see. The estab­lish­ment need­ed a kick in the pants.

The Guardian’s report on Cor­byn’s vic­to­ry sums up some of his views on the issues, which we’ll see him speak to in West­min­ster in the weeks to come:

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.

Con­grat­u­la­tions to Jere­my Cor­byn and Tom Wat­son. We wish them the best as they assume the man­tle of the Labour Par­ty. At last, Labour has twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry lead­ers who dig­ni­fy the lega­cies of leg­ends like Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson.