Jeremy Corbin and the left turn of the Labour Party

• Main Author: Yurii Latysh
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Department of Modern and Contemporary History of Foreign Countries 2018-11-01
• Series: Європейські історичні студії
• Subjects: Labour Party; left-wing movement; “New Labour”; British parliamentary elections in 2017; Brexit
• Online Access: http://eustudies.history.knu.ua/yurii-latysh-jeremy-corbin-and-the-left-turn-of-the-labour-party/

The article touches upon the ideological and political transformation of the Labor Party of Great Britain after the defeat in the 2015 parliamentary elections. The struggle between the supporters of Anthony Blair’s policy (“New Labour”) and “hard left” ended with an unexpected victory by veteran of Labour, Leftist Socialist Jeremy Corbin, despite the resistance of the Blairist establishment and media criticism. No less unexpected was the relative success of the Labour Party in the early 2017 parliamentary elections. The importance of the conceptual and the theoretical understanding of the “Left turn” of the Labor Party and the West in general, where the left-wing representatives (B. Sanders, J. Corbin, J.-L. Mélenchon) had achieved remarkable success in the elections, has been underlined. The article deals with the political biography of the leader of the Labour Party, his views on domestic and foreign policy. The course of the election campaign, the peculiarities of its coverage in the media, the reasons for the fall of conservative popularity and the rise of the Labour ratings have been highlighted. The Labour Party Manifesto 2017 “For the many, not the few”, which became the most left program since 1983, has been analyzed. As a result of the election, the Conservative and Unionist Party lost the majority in the House of Commons. It was a moral triumph of Jeremy Corbin over the “New Labour” which increased his chances of becoming Prime Minister in the future.