Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected as Leader of Britain’s Labour Party

[forest444]

Jeremy Corbyn strengthened his grip on Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Saturday, beating back a challenge to his leadership by members of Parliament with increased support from the party’s rank and file.

The results of the summer-long leadership struggle were announced in Liverpool, in northwestern England, on the eve of the annual Labour Party conference.

Mr. Corbyn, a 67-year-old hard-left politician, won 61.8% of the more than 500,000 votes cast, up from the 59.5% he won a year ago, when his victory shocked and divided the party.

A revolt by Labour members of Parliament, who said they feared that Mr. Corbyn would lead the party to electoral disaster, came to nothing as their favored candidate, Owen Smith, won only 38.2% of the vote.

The result tightened Mr. Corbyn’s grip on the party and isolated many of its members of Parliament from a growing membership that is younger and more left-leaning, drawn by Mr. Corbyn’s policies to reduce inequality, make Britain non-nuclear and renationalize key areas of the economy, like the railways and energy.

The party has almost tripled its membership to more than 500,000, making it the largest political party in Western Europe, Mr. Corbyn said. But opinion polls regularly indicate that if an election were held tomorrow, Labour under Mr. Corbyn would suffer a historic defeat in the country as a whole.

In a victory speech, Mr. Corbyn called for unity, said that more held “the Labour family” together than divided it and vowed that the party would win the next election under his leadership.

At: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/25/world/europe/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-leader.html?_r=0

[MADem]

1. Which means we can look forward to Conservatives leading the nation for a while longer....

Corbyn just doesn't have crossover appeal.

I think he is too divisive a figure, and his personal life is too much in the news. When people know more about that than your policy positions, it bodes ill.

[Warpy]

2. Corbyn is flawed but he needs to be viewed as a symptom, not the disease

Here it's Trump and Sanders, symptoms that the old ways of thinking in the halls of power are being firmly rejected. Business as usual is killing us here as well as it is in the UK. The "good poodle" Blair Labourites were just as toxic as the Tories and people recognize that and the rise of Corbyn is the result.

Eventually, Corbyn will be unseated, preferably by someone without his goofy baggage. However, for the time being, his party needs to regard him as what he is: a symptom of a disease that could prove fatal to Labour.

[MADem]

3. Blair was far too accommodating and became entranced by

the spotlight on the world stage. He buddied up to George Bush, sharing their love of Colgate toothpaste, and was so eager to stay "in play" that he completely compromised his principles. He'd rather have been regarded as a lackey than have had to fight charges of weakness.

By the time he was cavorting with Wendi Murdoch, he was a lost soul. Unredeemable.