Britain’s Corbyn survives Labour Party challenge
LONDON — Jeremy Corbyn was reelected leader of the bitterly divided Labour Party on Saturday, just a year after his darkhorse ascension rocked Britain’s political world.
Mr. Corbyn, who has been described as “Britain’s Bernie Sanders,” proved once again he is overwhelmingly popular with the party’s grass roots, seeing off his challenger Owen Smith by winning 61.8 percent of the vote.
“Let us work together for real change in Britain,” the 67-year-old socialist said after the results were announced Saturday at the start of the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool.
Mr. Corbyn also pleaded for unity in his party, which is engaged in a spectacularly messy internal fight.
“Elections are passionate, and often partisan, affairs, and things are sometimes said in the heat of the debate, on all sides, which we sometimes later come to regret,” he said. “Let’s wipe that slate clean from today.”
The result was widely expected despite a bruising contest that has cast a spotlight on the deep divisions within a party that has been shut out of power since 2010.
Mr. Corbyn may be wildly popular with the party’s grass roots, but he lacks the support of many of his party’s representatives in Parliament.
A leadership contest was triggered after Britain’s shock decision to leave the European Union, commonly referred to as “Brexit.” Shortly afterward, 172 of Labour’s 230 lawmakers supported a vote of no confidence in their leader.
Some cited Mr. Corbyn’s leadership style as the reason he should quit, while others were critical of his performance in the E.U. referendum. Corbyn campaigned for Britain to stay in the bloc, but some say they felt his heart wasn’t really in it and that he didn’t do enough to shore up pro-E.U. support.
But the rebellion backfired, with Mr. Smith failing to generate the kind of enthusiasm that burns bright among Mr. Corbyn’s followers.
That contingent, known as “Corbynistas,” are energetic, enthusiastic and a force on social media. Since Mr. Corbyn became leader, large numbers of people have flocked to join the Labour Party. Mr. Corbyn told the conference that it has more than 500,000 members and is the largest political party in western Europe.
But some Labour supporters worry that his appeal doesn’t extend beyond a niche segment of the British electorate.
A recent YouGov poll showed Labour trailing the Conservative Party by nine points.
John Curtice, a politics professor at the University of Strathclyde, said that the Labour Party’s “fundamental problem” is that it has no one who has shown an ability to grab the attention of the wider public.
“There isn’t anyone in the parliamentary party who has demonstrated they are up for the job,” he said. “At least the Corbynistas have a candidate . . . . The non-Corbynistas don’t.”
When Mr. Corbyn, a veteran politician from the party’s left wing, won the leadership contest last year, it was widely seen as a rebuke to the Labour Party establishment and to Tony Blair, the former British prime minister.