Corbyn Easily Wins Re-Election As Head Of Labour Party

Jeremy Corbyn easily won re-election as the head of the Labour party on Saturday, winning nearly 62% of the votes cast by over 500,000 party members. Corbyn alleviated fears among more centrist Labour members by offering an olive branch after the election, saying, “Let’s wipe the late clean and get on with the work we have got to do as a party together”. This will probably not satisfy many of the current Labour members in Parliament who do not believe that Corbyn will be able to lead them to an election victory and are skeptical of his left-wing policies such as re-nationalization. But Corbyn has expanded that party base and actually won this election by a larger margin than he won his first. And it was not like the centrist policies were winning many elections either as many blamed Ed Milliband’s  and Labour’s shocking rout at the hands of David Cameron in the last election on his “Conservative-lite” positions, especially those on the budget and the economy. And the reality is that Labour’s complete disintegration in Scotland at the hands of the SNP has made winning any national election incredibly difficult for them.

The Brexit vote in the UK and the emergence of Donald Trump in the US just shows how disenchanted to voters have become with the established political order, largely as a result of its totally ineffective response to the Great Recession. People see that the big banks get bailed out and their executives still get paid ridiculous amounts of money but regular homeowners get no mortgage relief and find no jobs available – the system is just not working for them. Yet politicians in Westminster and Washington do not seem to comprehend that anger. That is why everyone was shocked by the Brexit vote and even Republicans in Washington cannot fathom the Trump phenomenon. The mood of these disenchanted voters seems to be that the system is so corrupt and sclerotic that is essentially needs to be blown up. They don’t really have an idea of what should replace it but they certainly can’t stand business as usual. In the UK, Nigel Farage tapped into that feeling to lead the emergence of UKIP. And Corbyn seems to at least realize that Labour can possibly attract voters with a real left-wing alternative to the status quo. Like the die-hard third-way Democrats in the US, the centrist element in the Labour party that prefers a Conservative-lite agenda does not realize that their time is over and done and more left-wing, progressive policies are ascendant.