Jeremy Corbyn is probably the first person to have won the leadership of the British Labour Party on a campaign that advanced a left agenda. He did so in fine style, with the support of 60 per cent of the membership, to the dismay of the Labour Party establishment. Reports suggest that plotting immediately began among the leadership of the Parliamentary Labour Party (PLP) to remove Corbyn from the leadership. The majority support for the referendum to leave the EU, provided the occasion on the spurious ground that one-third of Labour supporters voted to leave. There was no evidence to show that any leader could have achieved better results.
The Labour Party establishment, traditionally to the right of the membership, does not believe that Corbyn’s leadership and his full-blooded opposition to neoliberalism, austerity, inequality and tax breaks for the rich, which are being offered by the Tories, are the correct policies or that they will win elections. It always believed that a core policy of the more efficient management of capitalism, not extracting a greater proportion of its profits for the working population, is the route to periodic electoral success. This strategy, adopted by right wing social democracy in the West, is designed to win over some undecided or pro-Tory voters, not to mobilize a left/progressive alliance.