In yet another example of an electorate thumbing its collective nose at the establishment and all political parties, the British Labour Party has just elected a rank outsider as their new Leader. Talk about a turn to the Left!...but a man who, on the surface, appears principled. Now there aren't many politicians, anywhere, one can say that about.
"As if to underline the magnitude of the political earthquake that struck Britain this morning, Jeremy Corbyn, the newly-elected leader of the Labour Party, said that his first official act would be to attend a “Refugees Welcome Here” rally today in London. A 100-to-1 outsider when he entered the race at the beginning of the summer, the veteran left-wing MP and chair of the Stop the War coalition had trouble scraping together the 35 nominations from his fellow Labour members of parliament. Branded a fringe figure by the media and party insiders, Corbyn’s forthright opposition to austerity—he was the only one of the four leadership candidates to vote against the Conservative government’s punitive new welfare bill—brought hundreds of thousands of new members and supporters into the Labour Party. Yet when the votes were counted, Corbyn won nearly 60 per cent of the total, giving him the largest mandate of any leader of any British political party—ever."
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"It is of course possible, even probable, that the wheels will come off the Corbyn express long before it reaches Downing Street. In the contest between organised money and disorganised labor, only an optimist, or an idealist, would bet against capital. The fate of Syriza, which rallied the Greek people with a message of defiance and then were forced to bend the knee to the bankers’ demands, offers a warning (as it was meant to).
Still, it is worth asking ourselves what might happen if all of the new members Corbyn brought into the Labour Party decide to stay engaged, and mobilized, and turn the party’s record of lip-service socialism into a more serious challenge to the established order. If he accomplishes nothing more, Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has finally freed his party from the dead hand of Tony Blair."
"As if to underline the magnitude of the political earthquake that struck Britain this morning, Jeremy Corbyn, the newly-elected leader of the Labour Party, said that his first official act would be to attend a “Refugees Welcome Here” rally today in London. A 100-to-1 outsider when he entered the race at the beginning of the summer, the veteran left-wing MP and chair of the Stop the War coalition had trouble scraping together the 35 nominations from his fellow Labour members of parliament. Branded a fringe figure by the media and party insiders, Corbyn’s forthright opposition to austerity—he was the only one of the four leadership candidates to vote against the Conservative government’s punitive new welfare bill—brought hundreds of thousands of new members and supporters into the Labour Party. Yet when the votes were counted, Corbyn won nearly 60 per cent of the total, giving him the largest mandate of any leader of any British political party—ever."
****
"It is of course possible, even probable, that the wheels will come off the Corbyn express long before it reaches Downing Street. In the contest between organised money and disorganised labor, only an optimist, or an idealist, would bet against capital. The fate of Syriza, which rallied the Greek people with a message of defiance and then were forced to bend the knee to the bankers’ demands, offers a warning (as it was meant to).
Still, it is worth asking ourselves what might happen if all of the new members Corbyn brought into the Labour Party decide to stay engaged, and mobilized, and turn the party’s record of lip-service socialism into a more serious challenge to the established order. If he accomplishes nothing more, Jeremy Corbyn’s victory has finally freed his party from the dead hand of Tony Blair."
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