Comeback Corbyn
Westminster is fundamentally broken. Dozens of Conservatives, also known as Tories, have resigned from Parliament recently, including four different prime ministers in just eight years. The Labour shadow government has not fared much better unfortunately. For instance, the party removed self-proclaimed socialist Jeremy Corbyn from leadership following complaints of anti-Semitism and an underwhelming showing in the 2019 general election. In his place, Labour MP Keir Starmer has promised a “patriotic” pro-business rebrand for the party, one more approachable to moderates and disillusioned conservatives. This shift to the center, a strategy previously adopted by Labour leaders Tony Blair and Ed Miliband, blatantly ignores ordinary people at a time of vast poverty and austerity. Despite losing party recognition in the upcoming election, Corbyn’s lasting impact highlights the dysfunction endemic to the British establishment.
Corbyn is known by many around the world as the United Kingdom’s Bernie Sanders. Like Sanders, Corbyn has been a radical political outsider for the better part of a century. Since being elected to the Islington North seat in 1983, he has ferociously championed many progressive causes, including his famous opposition to Blair’s invasion of Iraq during the early 2000s. The mounting frustration from the Iraq War, coupled with the 2008 recession and financial crash, ended Blair’s political career in disgrace. Although Blair’s successor as prime minister, Gordon Brown, was able to successfully orchestrate a 75 billion USD bailout for Britain’s three largest banks, many voters still viewed the Labour government as being responsible for the recession. Following their electoral defeat in 2010, Labour’s shadow cabinet, now led by Miliband, began to embrace austerity measures in an attempt to regain public confidence. David Cameron’s Tory-led parliament then instituted devastating budget cuts which squeezed public services and accelerated privatization. The lack of a genuine leftist counter only further cemented Tory dominance during the 2015 elections. London trade unionist and author Simon Hannah argues that “Labour leaders were so desperate to prove themselves ‘serious’ on economic issues they fell in line behind Tory arguments. Disaffection spread among the membership… destroying any hope of Labour carving out a specific space for itself on the electoral map.” While Labour’s political elite were convinced that voters were becoming more conservative, Corbyn was leading a populist revolution from within.
Much of Labour’s base, especially young voters, felt abandoned by the party’s continued right-wing direction. The Blair-Miliband years brought lucrative salaries for the rich and powerful at the cost of a gutted welfare state and worsened inequality. Corbyn effectively took advantage of this anger by promising a swift return to social-democratic policies. According to Hannah, “The movement behind Corbyn represented a decisive rejection of 40 years of neoliberalism and six years of austerity.” With this message, Corbyn easily attracted thousands of supporters from all over the United Kingdom. Not only was he popular on the ground, Corbyn’s political resistance had won the approval of the major trade unions as well. Hannah continues, “Corbyn’s stand against the (Tory) Welfare Bill and the rising tide of support for him in the rank and file of the labour movement meant that it was increasingly difficult for the union leaders not to back him.” Mainstream Labour’s unwillingness to protect social safety nets propelled the loudmouthed backbencher to party leadership overnight. Corbyn’s meteoric rise to stardom proved once and for all that there was still vast support for the anti-capitalist principles which made Labour strong in the first place. The height of Corbynism came during the 2017 elections, where his Labour party was able to deny Theresa May’s Tories a majority in Parliament. This achievement, while monumental for the left, would quickly be overshadowed by attacks both internally and externally.
Following the election of 2017, all eyes were on Corbyn and his growing underground movement. On one hand, Corbyn’s socialist vision came at odds with many of the moderate MPs at the party’s upper echelons. While factionalism has always been a part of Labour, tensions between the right and left within the party were now impossible to ignore. Immediately after Corbyn’s ascension, senior party officials such as Yvette Cooper and Rachel Reeves outright refused to serve in the shadow cabinet. Former PM Tony Blair even said that he preferred losing to the Tories over winning with Corbyn: “I wouldn’t want to win on an old-fashioned leftist platform. Even if I thought it was the route to victory, I wouldn’t take it.” On the other hand, Labour became the largest political party in Western Europe under Corbyn, surging to more than 550,000 paying members. Despite the grassroots momentum, news headlines were mainly focused on the supposed rift between Labour’s top leadership. British political researcher Paul Whiteley notes that “These intra-party divisions were widely publicised, and it quickly became apparent to the public that a civil war was going on within the party.” These internal issues were made worse by accusations that Labour had become “riddled with anti-Semites,” prompting several Jewish MPs to leave the party entirely. While complaints only concerned about 0.1 percent of Labour’s total membership, the scandal had an immeasurable effect on Corbyn’s reputation leading up to the 2019 election. Glasgow University researcher Greg Philo found that “(From 2015-2019) there had been 5,497 stories on the subject of Corbyn, anti-Semitism and the Labour Party across Britain’s eight most popular national newspapers. Most of these reports were hostile to the Labour leader.” The media’s persistent portrayal of Corbyn’s Labour as an extreme, divided, and bigoted party proved instrumental in securing an electoral victory for the Tories. Keir Starmer became the new party leader following Labour’s defeat to Boris Johnson in 2019, a spiritual return to Blair’s New Labour and an open rejection of the hard-left. Although Corbyn himself had been a longtime defender of the Jewish community and had denounced all instances of anti-Semitism within his ranks, the veteran MP was later banned from running as a Labour candidate in future elections.
While Corbyn’s time in the frontbench was marred by controversy and constant chaos, the same could be said about the Tories. Only three years after coming to power, Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson was forced to resign after he knowingly promoted an MP accused of sexual misconduct. His replacement, Liz Truss, lasted only 49 days in office before being ousted by her own party. While Rishi Sunak’s tenure as PM has been somewhat less tumultuous, his approval rating has plummeted to 24 percent according to IpsosUK. By comparison, Starmer’s Labour Party is projected to win 41 percent of the electorate in this year’s general election, the largest margin of victory for any British political party since World War II. A key factor in the Tory Party’s historic unpopularity has been their inability to offer a concrete solution to the cost of living crisis. At a time when the economy seems to be the most pressing issue for British voters, “rising energy prices, food shortages, and growing poverty” are the only things Tories have to show after over a decade in power. Many ordinary families continue to struggle even after Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic, evidenced by the 15 percent rise in child destitution just in the last year. This cycle of despair is the culmination of failed market-friendly policies, pushed by both Labour and Tory administrations.
Britain’s current political climate holds many grim parallels to the 2015 general election. Both feature a centrist Labour opposition challenging a vulnerable Tory government in the midst of a suffocating financial crisis. Miliband’s Labour even dominated the Tories at several points in the campaign trail as well, only to lose it all a month before polls closed. While Starmer’s lead is noticeably greater, his unweathered allegiance to corporate interests may once again prove to be his party’s downfall. According to figures published by the Electoral Commission, Labour has so far lost over 100,000 members since its peak in July 2017. Some powerful unions have even opted to cut their party contributions in the wake of Corbyn’s departure. Sharon Graham, the General Secretary of Labour’s biggest financial backer Unite, warned that “there’s a lot of other money that we use from our political fund where, actually, I’m not sure we’re getting the best value for it…Labour needs to talk about workers, needs to defend workers and needs to defend communities.” Several MPs on the left have already criticized Starmer’s new approach, claiming it “risked alienating young and BAME (Black, Asian, and Minority Ethnic) voters and lacked ambition and authenticity.” Whether or not Labour endorses Corbyn, the socioeconomic conditions at the root of his mass appeal are still prevalent. Even if Starmer is elected Prime Minister in 2024, his neoliberal agenda will likely fail to meet the demands of an increasingly divided and impatient British public.
The necessity of having a Jeremy Corbyn in politics cannot be overstated. At a time of fierce deadlock and rising anxieties, Corbynism remains the voice of the unheard and marginalized. The Islington-North MP wrote last year: “There are reasons why half a million people are on strike in Britain. The reasons are low wages, poor working conditions, poverty and stress.” Corbyn continues to be a beacon for global peace as well, seen in his committed stance against Israel's ongoing siege of the Gaza strip, a Western-backed assault which has claimed the lives of over 30,000 Palestinans since October. While Corbyn’s days of governing may be numbered, his tireless activism has inspired a new generation of progressives around the world. As Labour gears up against the Tories once again, it must remember the collapse of Miliband and Blair and fight for systemic change.