Special Post- Jeremy Corbyn: the British Bernie Sanders

Here's that extra post I promised you, Genossinnen und Genossen.

     One of the most continuous sources of good news over the last few weeks has been the Labour Leadership contest- the Labour Party (Great Britain) is currently conducting a campaign to determine who will lead the party during the next five years of opposition and effectively run for Prime Minister in 2020 (Or sooner if enough by-elections due to deaths or resignations cost the Tories their slim majority).  Socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn has rocketed to the top of the polls.

     To appreciate just how significant this is, we need a little history lesson.  After assuming majority status for the first time in 1945 under Clement Attlee, Labour carried out a remarkable program, assuming public ownership of many utilities, major transport companies, and all stages of health care, providing access to millions of people who had never been able to afford it before, while finally recognizing the long-fought for independence of many British colonies including India.  They followed this tour de force performance with a rather more tepid program in the 1960s, but still deserve credit for things like the abolition of executions and the legalization of homosexuality 35 years before the United States did.  The rise of Thatcher dealt a body blow to all that is good and nice- union rights, the NHS, welfare policy, the list goes on- and she kept Labour out of government for four terms.  In one way, she destroyed the Labour Party by convincing the British punditry that only conservative policies of war and austerity would ever be popular again, a delusion which Labour has only recently begun to question.  In another she certainly gave them a potent ally by waging a completely gratuitous economic war aimed at destroying key Scottish industries to please her banking masters, awakening a once-conservative region to the harsh realities of modern Capitalism, and Scotland has become the most progressive part of the UK in the intervening years.  But a further problem lay with the rest of Labour, which embarked on a continued path of invasion abroad, and privatization and regressive tax breaks at home under its "New Labour" ideology and Prime Minister Tony Blair.

     Labour ventured as far as an explicit focus on income inequality and a robust Climate Change policy in the last parliament under Ed Miliband, but proposed little in the way of substantial changes to make the economy fairer, and this leadership election looked to be a step back- with several centrist candidates backed by the establishment, and none of them holding Ed's redeeming feature of outstanding environmental responsibility.

     There was also Jeremy Corbyn.
                            
                                               image from wikimedia commons- thanks!

     Barely qualifying for the ballot, he is the MP for a London Borough called Islington North, has been in Parliament since 1983, and has been a consistent antiwar, socialist politician who has dared to vote against his party's own program of austerity more than five hundred times!  He's campaigning on a program of renationalizing Britain's transport system, rapprochement with Latin America, robust infrastructure spending, especially in the former industrial heartlands of the north, aggressive environmental regulation, the restoration of free university, abolition of Britain's nuclear arsenal, and a variety of other causes frequently regarded as hopelessly leftist by the Very Serious People and the Committee of Important Men with Huge Beards Who Decide Such Matters.

     But somehow, Jeremy Corbyn is winning, leading in Yougov polls- the most precise in Britain's last two major elections, and in a solid second in many others.  The betting markets have swung in his favor, and he has racked up more endorsements from local party chapters than any other candidate, and more from unions than for all the others put together.

     It turns out that not all Labour voters actually supported their party's abandonment of everything it once stood for.  Jeremy has been addressing overflow crowds, and has already inspired 20,000 young people to pay dues to join Labour for the first time- that may not sound like much but it represents a 10% increase in dues paying party membership and therefore leadership voters.  Hardly a day passes without a Tory cabinet (or New Labour Shadow Cabinet) member or major newspaper declaring that this is frightening and impossible; this grassroots movement of progressives and socialists has found a champion in Jeremy Corbyn, MP.


     Unfortunately, not all the right-wing hand wringing has been passive.  Acting Labour Party Leader Harriet Harman has directed all MPs and local organizations to submit lists of Corbyn supporters in order to expel them from the Labour Party and strip them of voting rights.  Loathsome as this is, it remains to be seen how effective this will be but it's a gross attack on democracy and could very well derail Corbyn's prodigious chances of victory.


     Even if the Blairites succeed, there is one hell of an upside:  Corbyn has offered a Textbook case for Bernie Sanders to imitate in the study of "Win or Lose, you run hard, become relevant, make them react to you".  Establishment candidate Andy Burnham has recently endorsed two key points of Corbyn's platform: free tuition and public ownership of the railways.  Corby has demonstrated that the actual Socialists in Labour require all the other factions piling on them at once to hold them back, and this presents a logical choice to the next Labour leader: Scotland, once home to a quarter of their seats, is a lost cause as long as they push for more Austerity policies, and now they have to contend with a seriously pissed off base in England too as long as they ignore Corbyn's ideas.

Because they're the ideas that made Britain great, and they're the ideas of the future.  They're the same ideas that we're fighting for in the Sanders campaign- we need to look everywhere for our comrades and spread the word about all of them.  We must build, and see ourselves building a truly global movement for Socialism.  There really isn't any alternative anymore.

So to Mr. Corbyn- we're all rooting for you here.  Any readers in the UK, please comment and let us know what we can do to help!


P.S.  I'm still very interested in comments, or even article submissions, from anybody!  Please send i anything you want to see here!

Edit- as of now, that's a 100% increase in dues paying supporters, 200% if the bulk of the active applications don't get purged.  The Labour Party has tripled its dues paying membership in five weeks thanks to Jeremy Corbyn.