After Ed Miliband’s departure last week, Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as the new leader of the UK Labour Party.
Although an unlikely candidate, Corbyn won by a landslide majority with 60 percent of the vote. Corbyn received 251,000 of the 422,000 votes cast.
Party members, registered supporters and affiliated supporters can vote for party leaders.
The election of Corbyn, a self-proclaimed socialist, has been labelled as a shift towards the far left of the ideological spectrum. In his victory speech, the new leader indicated his leadership would return the party to its ideological roots.
Corbyn said people are “fed up with the inequality, the injustice, the unnecessary poverty … those issues have brought people in in a spirit of hope and optimism”.
“During these amazing three months, our party has changed. We have grown enormously, because of the hopes of so many ordinary people for a different Britain, a better Britain, a more equal Britain, a more decent Britain,” said Corbyn.
Corbyn’s surprising election is part of a trend of support for more radical left-wing agendas throughout Europe and the UK. Earlier this year, the Scottish National Party won all 52 electoral seats in Scotland, adding to the dismal election result for the Labour Party, which had previously retained most of the seats.
Corbyn’s election has also been described as the end of the “Blairite” ideology, referring to policies popularised by former prime minister, Tony Blair.
Bryce Edwards, politics lecturer at the University of Otago, argued on TVNZ’s Q+A that the shift to the left was the result of “spin-doctor politics”.
“I think it’s a reaction against years of that middle-of-the-road politics in Britain and the “Blairite” years,” argued Edwards.
“It takes a while sometimes for these reactions to occur, but it’s also a reaction against fake politics, that sort f spin-doctor politics, and that’s why we’ve had the grass-roots movement, and that’s really what his victory has been about,” Edwards said.