The latest polls suggest that UK’s Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn might be leading his party to a historic defeat in next month’s general election. The Conservatives, under the leadership of Prime Minister Theresa May, “are set to become the biggest party in almost every area of Britain including traditional Labour strongholds,” British newspaper The Sun reported on Monday.
Labour has already been battered in local elections held earlier this month, “losing hundreds of seats and the control of stronghold councils defended by Labour for decades” — as the British newspaper Independent described it. Sensing an impending electoral drubbing, Corbyn admitted that his party faces “challenge on historic scale” in this general election.
Corbyn, a lifelong leftist agitator, came on to the political centre stage after winning of the 2015 Labour leadership election.
Since the last General Election two years ago, the Tories have improved their position in every region of Britain.Experts predict that if the results of the YouGov regional poll are repeated in the election on June 8, Theresa May will sweep to a huge majority. (…)The extraordinary figures state that 64 per cent of all voters prefer Mrs May to her left-wing rival, with even 22 per cent of Labour supporters backing the incumbent.In addition, 61 per cent of voters said it was “almost certain” that the Conservatives would win the election thanks to the party’s consistently strong polling. [The Sun, May 15, 2017]
Much like President Obama, Corbyn too started his political career as a ‘grass-roots organiser’. The 67 year-old Labour politician made a name for himself as the patron saint of obscure left-wing causes such as ‘Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners,’ Hamas-linked Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), and the KGB-funded ‘Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament’ at the height of the Cold War.
Over the years, Corbyn has cultivated close links with the UK-based anti-Israel campaign. Corbyn once addressed Hamas and Hezbollah as “our friends,” a comment he later half-heartedly retracted after dragging his feet for months, finally describing his utterances as “inclusive language”.
Corbyn has also called for “targeted boycotts” aimed at Israel in the past. British newspaper The Telegraph called him the ‘patron’ of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC), a leading backer of the anti-Israel boycott campaign (BDS) in the country. PSC in its official publication describes the Labour leader as someone who “regularly speaks at [its] rallies” and of being “tireless in his support for Palestine.”
But as irony would have it, the Labour Party leader is facing a boycott of his own — from the traditional Labour voters. As a YouGov poll found this week, “nearly a quarter of Labour voters do not want to see Mr Corbyn become Prime Minister.” Estimated 57 percent of the Labour voters want their party chief to “quit immediately if he loses the general election,” a saparate survey conducted by the British newspaper The Independent revealed.
The Conservative Prime Minister Theresa May has strengthened her position since the British electorates voted to quit the EU in a referendum last July.
The predictions of impending doomsday scenario in the case of a Brexit vote have all fallen flat. Markets continue to show confidence in the British economy. The British Pound rose in value against the Euro despite “experts” predicting a sharp fall following the victory of the pro-EU candidate Emmanuel Macron in France — a development that is likely to toughen the EU stance going into the Brexit negotiations.
The wave of British patriotism in the wake of the Brexit vote has even positively impacted the Church of England’s following. “Rise in patriotism credited for halt in decline of number of Church of England followers,” London-based Daily Express reported this week.
Once a mighty defender of the British workers in the hay days of the Industrial Revolution, the Labour Party under Corbyn has been transformed into a platform for social justice warriors and prefessional crybabies — something that won Corbyn glaring endorsements from American left-wing stalwarts such as Bernie Sanders, Michael Moore and Noam Chomsky, but alienating much of the working class vote at home.
If these poll numbers persist going into the June 8 election, the European Left’s embrace of the divisive identity politics at the cost of the ordinary working people might have finally come back to bite them.
Video: Prime Minister Theresa May on EU’s interference in the UK election
[Cover image courtesy YouTube]
CLICK HERE FOR FULL VERSION OF THIS STORY