{"id":433,"date":"2015-09-13T01:39:52","date_gmt":"2015-09-13T01:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/?p=433"},"modified":"2015-09-16T01:48:49","modified_gmt":"2015-09-16T01:48:49","slug":"rendering-old-labour-new","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/rendering-old-labour-new\/","title":{"rendered":"Rendering old Labour new"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"corbynmain\"<\/a><\/h4>\n

Jeremy Corbyn’s margin of victory was astounding and is evidence of just how much can change in a short space of time<\/h4>\n

No matter what declarations are made by Britain\u2019s politicians, political commentators and reporters over the next few days, one fact cannot be ignored following Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s election as the Labour Party\u2019s new leader \u2014 the margin of victory.<\/p>\n

It was a landslide. The 66-year-old scored almost 60 percent of first-preference votes, with his nearest rival, Andy Burnham, trailing on 19 percent. The Burnham campaign\u2019s Twitter account summed up their disappointment in a four-letter one-word (now deleted) tweet as the result was announced. (It began with an \u201cf\u201d).<\/p>\n

Six months ago, no one would have dreamed of this turn of events \u2014 at one point in the race, Labour\u2019s new leader was 100\/1 to win. Corbyn has gone from being a vocal yet relatively unknown backbencher to a political A-lister, with a huge mandate from Labour\u2019s growing membership to stand up and fight the Conservative government\u2019s austerity programme.<\/p>\n

Of late, Labour has shied away from denouncing Downing Street\u2019s plans, for fear of being seen as financially irresponsible by the electorate. But a considerable chunk of the 550,000 voters eligible to vote \u2014 many of them new members who paid three pounds to sign up \u2014 have just told the party to plant a flag in the ground.\u00a0No more, they say. And those Labour voters are not alone in Britain, of course \u2014north of the border, the Scottish National Party capitalized on such sentiments back in May.<\/p>\n

Many of the seats that handed the Tories victory in May were swings from the Liberal Democrats, not Labour.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many began writing Labour\u2019s obituary the moment Corbyn emerged as favourite and the next couple of days will inevitably see much of the British and international press fill column inches with the reasons why Labour are now unelectable.<\/p>\n

Certainly, with his proposed policies, it\u2019s difficult to see how Corbyn could win over the 100 or so Conservative seats he would need to win a general election. Many of the seats that handed the Tories victory in May were swings from the Liberal Democrats, not Labour.<\/p>\n

But truthfully, all this is years away. Writing obituaries is dangerous – who knows what may happen or what state the world will be in by then? The history of politics is filled with upsets and surprises.<\/p>\n

Since the last election, Labour has been toothless, directionless and frankly, has stood for little. Corbyn, fronting the opposition benches in the House of Commons, will give Labour an identity and something to stand for, even if his party\u2019s heavyweights desert his Shadow Cabinet.<\/p>\n

One interesting thing to watch especially will be Corbyn\u2019s exchanges with Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, the architect of David Cameron\u2019s austerity push and his possible future opponent at the next general. Should either of them make it that far.<\/p>\n

Five years is a long time in life, let alone in politics…<\/p>\n

@URLgoeshere<\/em><\/p>\n

An edited version of this column was published in the Buenos Aires Herald<\/span><\/a><\/span>, on Sunday, September 13, 2015 as part of the ‘Perceptions’ series.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Link: http:\/\/www.buenosairesherald.com\/article\/198642\/rendering-old-labour-new<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jeremy Corbyn’s margin of victory was astounding and is evidence of just how much can change in a short space of time No matter what declarations are made by Britain\u2019s politicians, political commentators and reporters over the next few days, one fact cannot be ignored following Jeremy Corbyn\u2019s election as the Labour Party\u2019s new leader […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":435,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40,38,39,218,101,37,42,275,41,490,99],"tags":[516,563,515,346,49,187,120,566,564,362,491,43,186,298,493,565,212,276,44],"class_list":["post-433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-britain","category-buenos-aires-herald","category-comment","category-economics","category-europe","category-journalism","category-media","category-perceptions","category-politics","category-unions","category-world","tag-britain","tag-british-politics","tag-buenos-aires-herald","tag-column","tag-comment-2","tag-david-cameron","tag-election","tag-election-vote","tag-george-osborne","tag-house-of-commons","tag-jeremy-corbyn","tag-journalism-2","tag-labour","tag-labour-party","tag-leader","tag-mp","tag-parliament","tag-perceptions","tag-politics-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":436,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433\/revisions\/436"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/435"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jgrainger.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}