TONY BURMAN
On the extraordinary rise of British socialist Jeremy Corbyn,
Imagine waking up five years from now — bright and cheerful — on the morning of May 8, 2020, and watching this incredible London scene on your television:
The newly elected prime minister of Britain, Jeremy Corbyn, who wants to abolish the monarchy, is heading to Buckingham Palace for a dramatic meeting with the Queen. He has just received a congratulatory phone call from U.S. President Donald Trump. Here in Canada, meanwhile, the 2015 election campaign is still going on.
Is this a dream? Is this a nightmare? Will this ever happen?
No, it won’t. Of course not. Or at least, we don’t think so. Perhaps not. But we don’t really have a clue, do we?
Regardless, as we cope with an endless election campaign here in Canada, the emergence of a political environment in which people such as Corbyn, Trump and others dominate their country’s discourse helps focus the mind.
As CBC Radio’s Michael Enright put it last Sunday about Canada’s election: “We have been trapped in a six-week-long loop of the same speeches, delivered over and over and over.” Stephen Lewis, in the same discussion, called it “prosaic banality” dominated by sound bites and tweets.
What’s depressing, Lewis noted, is that today’s political leaders have so many soaring challenges to debate — such as climate change, the refugee crisis and Canada’s place in the world: “There are issues today which so lend themselves to a broader scope, not merely of oratory but of analysis and thought.” But the opportunity is squandered.
This may be why Corbyn’s stunning election in Britain last weekend as the new head of the Labour Party is so significant. After all, he won by the largest margin of any elected leader in British political history.
If you cut through the hysterical conservative response to his victory — not only in London’s rightwing tabloid press but also here in North America — it may actually turn out to be, as the Independent newspaper described it, “the most extraordinary event in British politics” since the introduction of universal suffrage.
Corbyn is a 66-year-old socialist, a vegetarian and a republican, unabashedly proud of his left-wing credentials. He has a 32-year parliamentary record of having principles and sticking to them, but triggering considerable controversy because of that.
In terms of charisma and political savvy, hardly anyone thinks of him as a future prime minister, including many of his supporters. Already, the British right-wing press has tried to eviscerate Corbyn as a credible political figure: “Death of Labour” (Daily Telegraph), “Red and Buried” (Daily Mail), “Bye, Bye Labour” (Daily Express).
But if he proves vulnerable to these attacks, Corbyn’s lasting legacy may be something far more important. It will be about why he was elected in the first place.
Corbyn’s success exposed the hypocrisy and incompetence of Britain’s mushy moderates — embodied by the increasingly discredited Tony Blair — who consistently sacrificed principle in their quest for power. It is that lesson that may resonate in the political cultures of other countries, including Canada’s.
In an effort to “understand” Corbyn’s success, North American commentators have often compared him to Trump. But that is nonsense. Trump is an entertainer and a clown. He doesn’t have a day of political experience, and his views change with the wind.
Trump is likely what the late Neil Postman had in mind when he wrote his provocative 1985 analysis of television, Amusing Ourselves to Death. The media and culture critic argued that television — particularly TV news — demeans political discourse by making it less about ideas and more about image.
As he put it: “When serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, and when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.”
Thanks to Donald Trump, that is a real risk for the United States. But for the time being, thanks to Jeremy Corbyn, the same cannot be said about Britain.
As Canada’s election campaign drones on, in which direction are we heading?
New British Labour leader might just change politics