The shocking election result in the United Kingdom – the Conservatives losing their majority and the creation of a hung Parliament; and Jeremy Corbyn being more successful than any recent Labor candidate – cutting a 20 point Theresa May lead down to a near tie – gives hope to many that the global shift to the right, fueled by the failures of governments to meet the basic needs of their population and growing economic insecurity, may be ending.
Corbyn is a lifelong activist whose message and actions have been consistent. He presented a platform directed at ending austerity and the wealth divide and was openly anti-war. There are a lot of lessons for the Labor Party in the UK from this election but there are also lessons for people in the United States. We review what happened and consider the possibilities for creating transformative change in the United States.
The Corbyn Campaign Results
The Corbyn campaign showed that a political leader urging a radical progressive transformative agenda can succeed. Many in his own party, the neo-liberal pro-war Blairites, claimed Corbyn could not win, tried to remove him from leadership, and sabotaged and refused to assist his campaign.
Corbyn showed he could win the leadership of the UK in the future, maybe sooner than later. While Theresa May is in the process of forming a minority government with a small radical conservative party from Northern Ireland, there has already been a backlash, mass petitions and protests against it and UK history has shown in similar circumstances that the second place finisher, may, in the end form the government. Corbyn is taking bold and radical actions. He is preparing to present a Queen’s speech in which he will say that he and his party are “ready to serve” and will continue to push his program through Parliament. He is calling on other parties to defeat the government in Parliament.
to even suggest commie corbyn should be let anywhere near the levers of power suggest the meds you are on are obviously having the the desired effect.
a. Corbyn lost the election by a large margin.
b. Less than 25% of uk actually voted for for his failed socialist policies. had he not lied in their manifesto about supporting brexit that vote would have been even lower.
c. Corbyn got only 3 more seats than Brown and that was seen as a devastating defeat.
d. Blair managed 120+ more seats than Corbyn.
All in all the appears to be a mass delusion in this world that losers are winners. this, in my opinion, has been because of the take over and dumbing down of the education system.
Sometimes the bull wins senor
Anything is better than “more of the same”. While I disagree with Corbyn on some issues, unlike the likes of Blair, Bush or Clinton he seems to be genuinely doing what he thinks is right.
That’s worth more than agreeing on the issues, because someone doing what he thinks is right, unlike someone doing what he’s told by his donors, will change his position if he sees it doesn’t work out the way he thought it would.
The big problem with Corbyn is not Corbyn himself, it’s his party – chances are they wouldn’t let him change what needs to be changed by simply voting against their own man all the time (same problem we’d likely have seen if we had President Sanders in the US, and same problem we’re seeing to a lesser extent with President Trump).
The Tories seems to have the majority? The conservatives in Labor will stab him?
They don’t — both parties failed to get the majority they needed.
It’s 650 seats, so the needed majority is 326.
The Tories have 318, Labour has 262.
Now that looks like a big difference, but if you look at the smaller parties, the SNP, the Green Party and Plaid Cymru are relatively closely aligned with Labour, so adding their combined 40 seats, it becomes 318-302, getting close.
Sinn Fein (7 seats) is likely to abstain (they have a long history of boycotting the parliament), but they’re certainly on the left, so if they were to not abstain they would certainly go with Corbyn, and we’re at 318-309.
That leaves the LibDems who could go either way, with 12 seats, the Democratic Unionists Party (more likely to go with the Tories, but who knows what they’ll do if made the right offer) with 10.
If either candidate can convince them to join their team, that candidate has a majority.
It’s a long shot, but not entirely impossible that Corbyn could make some deals and end up with 331 votes – 5 more than he needs.
They shut us down when they stole the primary from Bernie