Will there be another Labour leadership challenge?

Corbyn has surpassed all expectations—but there are still members of his party who won't want him as leader

by Alex Dean / June 9, 2017 / Leave a comment

Jeremy Corbyn during the 2016 leadership debates. Photo: PA

“He’s taking us back to 1983!” That was the accusation levelled at Corbyn from the moment he was elected Labour leader in 2015. Neil Kinnock, who himself spent much of the 1980s dragging Labour back to the centre ground, put this point to me in no uncertain terms last year. The theory was that with Corbyn at the helm, Labour would once again lurch to the left, suffering the inevitable electoral consequences.

The first part of this conventional wisdom proved true: when the election was called, Labour unveiled a radical left-wing manifesto. The second part has proved completely, utterly wrong. Michael Foot’s Labour Party lost 52 seats; Corbyn’s, quite remarkably, has gained 29. That includes the people’s republic of Kensington, once one of the Tories’ safest seats.

We should not get carried away. Labour was still beaten well into second place. Corbyn’s supporters will point to his extremely high vote share—at 40 per cent, it is an increase of 10 per cent on 2015—but the Conservatives have won by far the most seats.

Still, Corbyn will take heart from the result. Crucially, he and his supporters will now feel the leadership is his for the long-run. With the prospect of another general election soon, and with dozens of new MPs elected for the first time thanks to the Corbyn swing, therefore owing their allegiances to him, he will expect to hang on. His critics set him the test of winning MPs—he has done just that.

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Comments

Isa F.
June 9, 2017 at 15:19
The thing this article seems to overlook is how desperate many Labour (and even Lib-Dem) voters were to vote against the Tories under the increasingly authoritarian Theresa May. Many voted for Labour DESPITE Corbyn, not because of him, in the absence of any credible Centre-Left alternative.
Maria p
June 12, 2017 at 12:05
I disagree, I think in the end it was Corbyn-and his politics of integrity- that won the vote. Any removal of Corbyn will simply dissolve the labour party into obscurity. It is a mandate to keep a left socialist and humanitarian agenda and it will have to be listened to. What the labour offered was a real alternative which brought many people-including the young-into the polling station to vote. Before that the two parties seemed hardly different for a choice to be made on a deeply felt basis.