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Politics Jeremy Corbyn June General Election The Labour Party

Corbyn has won more seats than expected—but his beliefs are still deplorable

The electoral and parliamentary arithmetic has altered; the issues of principle have not

By Oliver Kamm  
June 9, 2017

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn leaving campaign headquarters today. Photo: NurPhoto/SIPA USA/PA Images

Labour lost the election, the third in succession since Tony Blair stepped down, despite a prolonged squeeze on household real incomes. Yet many pundits, including me, were mistaken. We expected Labour to suffer a historic defeat; evidently, so did Theresa May. The measure of our error is not the gains of 29 seats and 9.5 percentage points in the vote share, or the huge majorities built up in major urban constituencies, but the fact that Labour at…

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Oliver Kamm

Oliver Kamm is a leader writer and columnist for the Times. Mending the Mind: The Art and Science of Overcoming Clinical Depression is published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson (£16.99)

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