12 September 2015: Jeremy Corbyn becomes the leader of the Labour Party

Introduction

Jeremy Corbyn is a highly divisive figure amongst both the British political elite and general public. Most people either love or hate him, it is relatively challenging to find someone who does not have strong feelings towards Corbyn. Prior to his election as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015, Corbyn had been a backbencher for his entire parliamentary career. He had never held either a cabinet or a shadow cabinet position, thus his victory in the leadership race was an enormous upset. Despite the long term impacts of his leadership still not being completely clear, he definitely has already heavily influenced British politics in the short term. How exactly did Corbyn win the Labour leadership race and how has his leadership impacted the Brexit issue, the party system, British foreign policy and supposed antisemitism within the Labour Party?

The Day

The 2015 Labour Party leadership election was held from the 14th of August 2015 to the 10th of September 2015, with results being announced on the 12th of September 2015. Previously, Ed Miliband had resigned as the leader after a humiliating defeat in the 2015 general election. The race was expected to be between Blairite and centre-left candidates(Quinn, 2016). However, Labour’s more radical left-wing decided it was the correct time to field their own candidate. The chosen candidate ended up being a long-time backbencher, Jeremy Corbyn, whose main campaign promise was an end to austerity(Wintour and Watt, 2015). However, his biggest issue was gathering enough nominations amongst Labour MPs to actually even be on the ballot. To achieve that, nomination by at least 35 Labour MPs was needed, but Corbyn only had the backing of around 20. Despite that, he achieved enough nominations, because numerous more moderate MPs nominated him on the basis of widening the debate. According to the bookies, Corbyn was a 200 to 1 underdog early on in the race(Wainwright, 2018). Despite his lack of popularity amongst the Labour elite, Corbyn was incredibly popular amongst the extra-parliamentary party. The difference in preferences between Labour MPs and extra-parliamentary party have been an important factor in previous Labour leadership races as well. Most recently, this was seen in 2010 when Ed Miliband went up against his brother David. David was considered to be more popular amongst Labour MPs. Furthermore, the public opinion at the time also considered David to be more electable than Ed to the general electorate(Dorey and Denham, 2016). However, Ed won the leadership contest mostly thanks to the backing of important trade unions. In 2015 the backing of trade unions had become an even more crucial factor. Additionally, a scheme to allow members of the public to sign up as official Labour-supporters for 3£, making them eligible to vote in the leadership election, played in Corbyn’s favour. The plan was originally invented a year earlier to deal with shrinking party membership, hoping those registered supporters would later convert to full membership of the party(Collins, 2014). However, a lot of people ended signing up just to vote for Corbyn in the 2015 leadership elections, with no plans of ever joining the party. In the end, 83.8% of those registered supporters ended up voting for Corbyn(BBC News, 2015). There were many doubts about Corbyn’s suitability for the role, caused by many of his controversial actions and views in the past, which included: likely meeting with Czechoslovakian pro-Soviet spies in the wake of Eastern European democratic revolutions(Doward, 2018); having voted against Britain in the EU on numerous occasions(Wilson, 2016), which was an important factor as David Cameron had just won the 2015 general election on the promise of holding a Brexit referendum; his supposed antisemitism(Mason, 2015); his very strong anti-nuclear stance, that was perhaps best demonstrated in the Guardian(2015) a few weeks after he had already been elected, which prompted questions about national security would he become the Prime Minister and many more. He managed to overcome those issues and by the time voting opened he was already considered to be a frontrunner. A YouGov poll conducted from 6th to 10th of August estimated Corbyn to most likely win already in the first round of voting(YouGov, 2015). When the results were announced on 12th of September 2015, it was clear, Corbyn had beat the odds and become Leader of The Labour Party. He had gathered 59.5% of votes in the first round, enough for the overwhelming majority(BBC News, 2015). The election was also a humiliating defeat to Blairite candidate Liz Kendall, who got only 4.5% of the vote, perhaps showing how Labour Party was on the way to distance itself from Blairism or so-called third-way politics.

Corbyn and Brexit

In the first analysis paragraph of this paper, I am going to focus on the impact Corbyn has had on Brexit, however other less urgent issues will be discussed more briefly in the second part of the analysis as well. 2015 general election was won in a landslide by Cameron-led Tories, who had promised to hold a referendum on EU membership. It was mostly done by Cameron to gain back votes from UKIP that had won 2014 European Parliament elections in an upset, gaining many votes in areas that were previously considered Tory safe seats(bbc.co.uk, 2014). Furthermore, he had to silence eurosceptics inside his own party to hold onto his leadership seat. Euroscepticism inside the Conservatives had been on the rise since 1990 when Thatcher was forced to resign by her more pro-European cabinet members(Meislová, 2017). As it also advanced his idea of destroying UKIP, Cameron gave in to them and promised to, was he elected, hold a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, despite personally wanting to remain in the EU. As mentioned earlier, Tories went on to win the election in a landslide. Now the UK was in a position, where Tory MPs were given free will to campaign either for remaining or leaving, with 52% opting to support the Remain campaign, 38% wanting to leave and 10% not taking either side(Moore, 2016). On the other hand, Labour was expected to, alongside Liberal Democrats, strongly support the case of remaining in the European Union. In early January of 2016, 53.5% of Labour voters supported remaining in the EU with only 30.4% opposing it(survation.com, 2016). However, as mentioned earlier, newly-elected Corbyn was known as a eurosceptic. Liberal Democrats are a relatively marginal party with very little seats in the House of Commons, thus Corbyn essentially became the leader of the Remain campaign, despite his personal views on the issue. It could be argued that his less than passionate campaigning for remaining was one of the key reason Leave won the referendum. Jeremy Corbyn did not make a pro-EU statement until mid-April 2016 and went on holiday during a crucial campaign period in May. Furthermore, he did not participate in any of the major pro-Remain events and kept criticising the EU(The Economist, 2016). On the other hand, he also might have opted for such an unclear campaigning strategy not only because of his own dislike of the EU, but to satisfy Labour-voting regions in the North, which generally oppose free movement of people that comes with the EU membership(Bailey, 2018). In the end, it does not matter if his exact motives were the personal views or party politics, largely because of his weak campaigning the UK voted to Leave. It is estimated that a lot of Labour voters did not even participate in the referendum as they felt, based on Corbyn’s lack of passion towards it, that it was just not an important one(Mason, 2016). However, what Corbyn went on to do in the morning after the referendum could be considered even more consequential for Britain. He went on to immediately call for triggering Article 50 on the 24th of June, just a day after the vote(LabourList, 2016). This put pressure on the Tories to do it earlier than they would have prefered to. In retrospective, it can be said that Article 50 was indeed triggered too early as, by that point, late March 2017, negotiations with the EU on a deal had not even started. This is perhaps why the whole Brexit process is in shambles now and not having a No Deal-scenario relies solely on the mercy of the EU to extend Article 50. Having a eurosceptic in charge of a party supposed to campaign for Remain led Britain to vote for Leave and his actions post-referendum have also made the possibility of leaving with a good, thoroughly negotiated deal, lower.

Corbyn and other issues

Corbyn has also been criticised for numerous other reasons, most important of which I will go over in this paragraph. Perhaps most noticeably, Corbyn has been blamed for the rise of antisemitism within the Labour Party. In fact, most of the supposedly antisemitic actions taken by Corbyn happened before 2015, but media started talking more about those once he became Leader of the Opposition. Some examples of Corbyn’s past controversial views on the topic include: referring to a convicted Hamas terrorist as a ‘brother’, blaming Israel for jihadist terrorism in Egypt and calling for renaming of the Holocaust Remembrance Day(Rich, 2019). As the Labour leader, he, for a long time, refused to suspend members immediately for making antisemitic comments. Notable examples include Ken Livingstone and Chris Williamson, both of whom were some time after their comments rightfully expelled from the party. This shows that while Corbyn might not be too passionate in actively fighting against antisemitism, he still does not tolerate it and even if it takes too much time, antisemites are still kicked out of the Labour Party in the end. However, as Corbyn does it reluctantly and often refuses to condemn them personally, many members of the Labour Party have been dissatisfied. It and Corbyn’s Brexit stance lead to 9 Labour MPs leaving the party and forming The Independent Group in February 2019(bbc.co.uk, 2019). It is hard to see that break-off really affecting British mainly two-party system, but it might definitely cost Labour some seats in the next election as previous Labour vote might split between 2 candidates in some constituencies now, letting Tories take the seat with the first past the post system. Another issue that has been raised with Corbyn is his supposedly pro-Russian foreign policy. When Skripals were poisoned with Novichok in Salisbury, Corbyn avoided condemning Russia for its chemical attack on the British soil and even went on to suggest that the sample of Novichok should be sent to Russia so they could confirm it does not originate from there(Katerji, 2018). Considering Corbyn’s past pro-Soviet statements, meeting with Czechoslovak spies, opposition to NATO and praise for Russian intervention in Syria, questions about his foreign policy could be raised. While it might seem as not a very important issue from Britain, where the possibility of Russian occupation is close to 0%, this is a serious issue for Eastern European states, for example, Baltics and Poland, that rely on UK’s assistance in case of a Russian invasion(Kentish, 2017).

Conclusion

Conclusively, it could be said that Corbyn definitely has strong support amongst trade union members and Labour’s radical left, to whom he has brought a voice they have not had since the 80s. However, his radical left views on topics like the EU, Israel and foreign policy have made him relatively unelectable to the more moderate voters and led numerous Labour MPs to leave the party. He is also at least partly responsible for the Brexit mess as it was him who called for the Article 50 to be triggered early. Thus, I would claim that Labour under Corbyn’s leadership is never going to win a general election and for them to become a contender again, they need to realise the mistake they made on the 12th of September 2015 and elect a new, more moderate, leader.

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