Daily Times

On the face of it, the Conservative party won the UK’s General Election on Friday; it secured the most seats and the largest share of the vote. Yet that account of Friday’s events simply demonstrates how numbers can sometimes reveal so little about politics — for the biggest story of the night was how the British Left under Jeremy Corbyn had staged an astonishing revival to leave the Tory government on the brink of collapse.

Understanding the context is all important. The conservative Prime Minister Theresa May had ostensibly called this snap election to crush the Labour-led opposition and secure an unassailable nationalistic mandate to pursue a ‘Hard Brexit’ out of the European Union. Labour leader and lifelong socialist Corbyn had been written off by the entire establishment and press as ‘unelectable’ based on his leftwing ideas. Media pundits had near-unanimously declared that he would lead the Labour party into electoral oblivion. Parliamentarians from the Center and Right of his own party had fought for months to depose or undermine him. The tabloid press had attacked him with particular venom, branding him everything from a traitor, to a terrorist sympathiser to a national security threat.

When the election was called, Labour was 20 percent behind the Tories in the polls and all predictions pointed to a landslide that would see the Tories get a 100 to 200 seat majority and Labour obliterated as a political force. Yet as the smoke cleared on Election Day, Labour had gained 33 seats and increased its vote share by 10 percent (the largest increase between elections since 1945), while May’s government stood robbed of both its parliamentary majority and mandate for negotiating Brexit on its terms. Far from gaining the commanding authority May had envisaged, she was left pleading with a Far Right Northern Irish party to prop up her government, and fighting off calls for her resignation.

Well, some might say, Corbyn still not did win the election, did he? He couldn’t stop the Tories from forming a coalition nor did he match the famous victories of past Labour leaders like Tony Blair.

What makes Corbyn’s success unique is the distinctiveness of his politics from that of his predecessors. For much of his career he has been considered to be on the fringes of acceptable political discourse in the UK. Unlike Labour Centrists from the past who won by aligning their interests with the economic, political and security status-quo, Corbyn represents a repudiation of the ideological consensus that has prevailed in Britain and much of the Western world since the Reagan-Thatcher years.

Be it opposition to the excesses of neoliberal globalization, the catastrophic invasion of Iraq, anti-poor austerity measures, institutional racism, Islamophobia, or British complicity in the occupation of Palestine, Corbyn has for decades been at the forefront of progressive resistance to injustices enabled and legitimized by the British establishment. This is central to what makes his electoral success so remarkable; that someone of his radical political orientation can now claim to represent 40 percent of the British electorate.

At his best, Corbyn exudes an unalloyed authenticity that is rare in a political class long dominated by technocratic elites and careerists

It is also about what Corbyn managed to prevent. The election was taking place in the context of Brexit, the Trump victory, and the rise of the Far Right across the US and Europe. May’s Tories, egged on by a viciously rightwing British press, wished to ride the seemingly inexorable tide of xenophobia and nativism to crush the opposition and institute far reaching changes in British state and society. An emboldened May with a huge parliamentary majority could have had the license to remake one of the world’s most powerful countries in her authoritarian image, much like Thatcher did years hence. Corbyn’s resolute effort, while not achieving a victory, managed to stop the Conservative party in its tracks and strip it of the mandate it needed to make those changes.

How did this happen? Beyond the insipid and fearful campaign run by May, it was principally the content of Labour’s unapologetically left wing message — a fairer distribution of wealth and power, investment in health, education and housing, better terms and pay for workers, ending unnecessary foreign conflicts, and creating a more equal society. It was a hopeful, positive vision that resonated with millions of voters experiencing declines in living standards and crumbling public services amid years of economic stagnation and austerity.

Secondly, it was about Corbyn himself. While the man is the opposite of a charismatic orator — unassuming and awkward at best — even his opponents testify to his principled political consistency. At his best, Corbyn exudes an unalloyed authenticity that is rare in a political class long dominated by technocratic elites and careerists.

Finally, it was about young people; millions of them turned up to support Labour on Election Day. The youth surge wasn’t just limited to voting. The organizational efforts of young progressives — from making phone calls to knocking on doors — allowed Labour to compete with the much larger budgets of the Conservatives. Labour’s ultimate electoral gains were testament to the value of a motivated grassroots network for translating popular support into votes. As the current government’s fragility makes the likelihood of another election imminent, the presence of this activist network will be an enormous asset in the months to come.

Whether these advances will be sustained remains to be seen. But in an increasingly insular and polarized world, Corbyn’s surge has already had an important demonstrative effect; that it is possible to build a more equal and inclusive political alternative through a hopeful vision, a credible messenger and sustained grassroots organisation; and that pragmatic engagement in the electoral arena is an urgent, critical need for the Left everywhere.

More than anything, Corbyn’s rise demonstrates that socialism is no longer the relic from the past that the proponents of the established order would have us believe. It confirms that constructing a new politics of the Left for the 21th century is not just eminently possible — it is the only plausible way to prevent the forces of xenophobia, militarism, fundamentalism and ultra-nationalism from destroying the world we live in.

The writer is a researcher in gender, development and public policy and a political worker for the Awami Workers Party. He tweets @ammarrashidt