Jeremy Corbyn elected Labour leader

[Ryan_m_b]

In an absolute landslide (40% ahead of second place!) social democrat Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party:
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34223157

Very interesting times ahead in British politics, an opposition party that now will shift away from the centre and further away from the Conservatives.

 

[Astronuc]

The Jeremy Corbyn Story: Profile of Labour's new leader
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-34184265

But to his army of supporters he is the only honest man left in politics, someone who can inspire a new generation of activists, and make them believe that there is an alternative to the neo-liberal Thatcherite consensus that has let them down so badly.
. . . .
He belongs to a dwindling band of MPs, which also includes Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, who held fast to their socialist principles as their party marched steadily to the right under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
. . . .

 

[Vanadium 50]

It will be interesting to see his shadow cabinet.

 

[mheslep]

Conservative MEP Dan Hannan in the Examiner.

For the first time in a lifetime of political analysis, I find myself lost for words. Nothing I write can do justice to the calamity that Britain's Labour Party has just inflicted on itself. The best I can do, to give you a sense of the man newly elected as Leader of Her Majesty's Opposition, is to summarize some of his opinions.

Jeremy Corbyn is happy to talk to Irish Republican Army men, avowed anti-Semites and Hezbollah militants; but he refuses "out of principle" to talk to the Sun newspaper, a right-wing tabloid.

He campaigns for the national rights of Venezuelans and Palestinians; but he opposes self-determination in Northern Ireland and the Falkland Islands.

He'd like to admit as many Syrian refugees as possible, but is curiously ambivalent about why they became refugees in the first place, telling RT that Assad's chemical attacks may have been a Western hoax.

He is relaxed about Iran acquiring a nuclear weapon, but he can't stand the idea of Britain having one.

He says taxpayers should be able to opt out of funding the military, but not out of funding trade unions.

He wants to re-open coal mines that have been uneconomical since the 1960s; yet, oddly, he wants to wean us off fossil fuels.

He can't even unequivocally condemn the Islamic State without adding a "but…" to the effect that America shouldn't have been in Iraq.

He is, in short, happy to ally with any cause, however vile, provided it is sufficiently anti-British and anti-American.

Jeremy Corbyn, whose steady and surprising march to victory ..., is a shambling, self-righteous repository of every second-rate, lazy, 1960s Marxist nostrum. ...