Where Jeremy Corbyn, the radical leftist who just became Labour Party's new leader, stands on all the big political issues

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Jeremy Corbyn

REUTERS/Stefan Wermuth

The new leader of Britain's opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn waves after making his inaugural speech at the Queen Elizabeth Centre in central London, September 12, 2015.

Jeremy Corbyn provided one of the biggest upsets in British political history on Saturday when he was elected as the new leader of the opposition Labour party.

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Who is Corbyn? And why was his landslide victory such a surprise to Britain?

The MP has been a feature of British politics for far longer than almost all of Prime Minister David Cameron's political allies - but he's mostly been on the backbench. At 66, he's 18 years older than Cameron, and he will be nearly 71 at the presumptive 2020 general election.

Corbyn is an unashamed socialist whose views have not shifted significantly since the mid-1980s, when he was elected as an MP. While colleagues with similar views have either lost their positions, resigned, or mellowed toward New Labour's more centrist stance, Corbyn barely moved an inch. Under the Blair and Brown governments, he was a rebel, constantly pushing back against their policies.

When Corbyn announced that he was running for Labour leader, he was given 100-1 odds by bookmakers. He didn't really even seem to want to run. He explained his decision to the Guardian back in June, saying that it was merely "his turn":

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We had a discussion among a group of us on the left about how we might influence future developments of the party. All of us felt the leadership contest was not a good idea - there should have been a policy debate first. There wasn't, so we decided somebody should put their hat in the ring in order to promote that debate. And, unfortunately, it's my hat in the ring.

But no one thought he would actually win, let alone in a landslide.

With 59.5% of the vote, he's beaten the share that Tony Blair got in 1994. The nearest contender, former health secretary (and presumed front-runner) Andy Burnham came in with 19%.

Corbyn's victory is part of a larger trend that sees growing support of anti-austerity politicians. In Greece, the crisis catapulted radical Syriza to power. Podemos, a leftist party in Spain that was only founded last year, has often led opinion polls. In the US, Senator Bernie Sanders is doing unusually well in the Democratic primaries, offering a platform usually much more recognisable from the European left.

Corbyn is offering a platform that's unlike anything Labour has run on in the last quarter of a century. Many of his young supporters weren't even born the last time a mainstream political party was pledging renationalisation and the abandonment of nuclear weapons.

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Tony Blair

Reuters

Prime Minister Tony Blair's centrist economic policies and close transatlantic alliance are out of the window.

Here are some of the major points:

Defence

  • Abolish Trident, the UK's nuclear missile system. Corbyn doesn't want a replacement.
  • Scale back military activity and spending generally.
  • Give people the opportunity to opt out of spending their taxes on the military.

Significance: Corbyn's defence policies would spark a pretty massive diplomatic crisis. Though the United States is a much bigger spender than the UK, London is one of Washington's most reliable international allies. On issues like Syria and Ukraine, British policy is closer to American policy than most other European countries. A Corbyn-controlled defence policy would almost certainly reduce that.

Other foreign affairs

  • Corbyn says he has "always campaigned against neo-colonial wars that are fought for resources on the pretence of fighting for human rights."
  • He believes there should be a way forward on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands through discussions with the Argentinian government.
  • Corbyn was always a supporter of Hugo Chavez' government in Venezuela, offering similar views as recently as June.

Significance: Though this is one area where the UK print media exaggerate Corbyn's stance, he's closer to Noam Chomsky than Winston Churchill. He's shared stages with a lot of extremely unsavoury characters, from groups like Hezbollah. Shortly after the Brighton bombing, in which Irish republicans attempted to assassinate Margaret Thatcher, Corbyn met two IRA members convicted of bomb-making.

Again, this doesn't exactly look like the start of a beautiful relationship between US foreign policy and a Corbyn-led British government.

Economic policy

  • Corbyn favours generally higher rates of taxation, and opposes the current approach of reducing the budget deficit largely through spending cuts. He would bring the higher rate of income taxation from 45% to at least 50%.
  • Corbyn favours a type of quantitative easing, but instead of buying bonds on the secondary market, the monetary financing would be used to pay for infrastructure spending.
  • Re-nationalising major utilities. Some of the privatised utilities of the 1980s and 1990s, like the rail network and the national grid, would be taken back under government control.

Corbyn

BBC Newsnight, Youtube

Corbyn has been a perennial Labour party rebel for decades, and has been in a small group of its most left-wing MPs since the 1980s.

Significance: Corbyn's economic policies break from the orthodoxy of the past 35 years. Though some economists remain supportive of renationalisation, it is not a mainstream position. The use of quantitative easing to pay for infrastructure has provoked particular opposition even from Keynesian-minded economists, who argue that the UK should simply borrow more money, since government bond yields are extremely low and there are fewer potential risks.

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Public services

  • The academies and free schools, schools run independently of local government control, which have boomed under the last two governments would likely be rolled back and taken back under the command of local politics.
  • Tuition fees for university, which were brought in under the Blair government, and which were increased under the coalition government which ran from 2010-2015, would be abolished.
  • An end to any privatisation efforts and increased private provision in the National Health Service.

Significance: Corbyn's views on public services are actually a little closer to many Labour MPs than his views on the economy and foreign policy. They are pretty predictable once you know his views on other issues.

Can he win? The smart money says no. During the 1980s, the British public consistently rejected the Labour party, which was perceived as too left-wing. In fact, Labour has not won a general election without Tony Blair as leader for more than 40 years.

What's more, Labour's own inquiry into what happened in the last general election suggests that voters thought the party was too anti-austerity. Ed Miliband, the previous leader, wanted to put distance between himself and New Labour, but Corbyn's victory marks a much further move to the left than Miliband did.

Then again, the same people saying that Corbyn could not possibly win the election largely said that he would come fourth in the leadership election that he just won. It's long been a left-wing talking point in the UK that the country just needs a proper, leftist platform to be put to the people.

If he manages the next five years as leader all the way up to the election, we'll find out.

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