It is not only the conservative Rightwing in Britain which is weary of the rise and rise of Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn. They are of course hurting badly with a hung Parliament scenario under the botched up and sudden electoral gamble of Prime Minister Theresa May, which witnessed an unprecedented increase in the share of votes for the Labour party to a high of 40 per cent seats, with 30 plus seats in the new Parliament.
However, what is becoming a pain within the Labour party is the dilemma of the Tony Blair supporters – the Blairites – who once rode the war machine with George Bush, and the neoliberal project with such gusto that often the twilight zones between Thatcherism and Blairism seemed to evaporate. So much so, the most famous cartoon of those days was that of Tony Blair, all teeth in display in full glory as a public spectacle, simultaneously being branded as a caricature and an American puppet. Indeed, those days, between the New Labour and the New Tory, the lines seemed to have blurred distinctively, with both looking almost the same in the cracked mirror of the times, even as no one found any WMDs in Iraq, despite the highpitched hyperbole of the American rhetoric.
Jeremy Corbyn seems to be turning everything upside down in the current circumstances if not exactly in the manner Karl Marx turned the metaphysical Hegelian dialectic upside down. This is a new landmark in British politics, ushered in by a transparent and dogged rebel with a consistency marked by years of antiestablishment politics, even as he openly announces himself as a ‘democratic socialist’ in contemporary times when the word, ‘socialism’, is looked at with utter disdain and cold war phobia by the neoliberal Right-wingers across the West, even while Trumpism struggles to score a victory even in the smallest chess game in the murky politics of hate.
Even as Theresa May seemed to have evoked a retrograde scenario of a return to 1950, scaring her die-hard supporters, Corbyn has been accused to harking back to a return to the 1970s. Surely, Corbyn is much more street-smart than to be obsessive about this back to the past syndrome. He has touched a chord within and outside the party, especially among the young, the educated and the working class, by evoking a completely different kind of a scenario, almost like a pragmatic utopia in the time of globalisation, which itself is in deep crisis.
He is opposed to austerity measures, like the Greek Leftists, and is asking for the impossible; nationalisation of the railways, all public services, with more public investment, a national education service, among other social welfarist and socialist schemes — issues which have distinctly struck a chord with the populace, struggling in a slumping economy amidst high unemployment with vast differences in wealth, and organised inequality. As in the current crisis on pay scales in the BBC, Corbyn and his supporters have ripped apart the mask of corporate capitalism where celebrities get obscene amounts as pay, even while the folks in the lower rung in the hierarchy are always vulnerable and fragile, pushed below the economic margins. In that sense, this Labour party under Corbyn is strikingly different.
One, he is opposed to the Tony Blair dream sequence which wanted to run the party and the State as a huge corporation with neo-capitalism as its mantra. He is also opposed to the entrenched structures of Thatcherism. Instead, he is pushing for large-scale decentralisation, grassroots initiatives, more democratisation and income equality. He is also pushing an old socialist agenda – more and more government investment and intervention in the social sector, in public services, and in social welfare schemes.
This is at once a revolutionary project in a scenario loaded with the dynamics of global capitalism, something which reminds of the early days of social welfare policies, especially as experienced so remarkably and with such high success in terms of human development index in the Scandinavian countries.
Add to this his ancient, stoic and relentless commitment against the war machinery, in support of the peace process, against nuclear armament, and his opposition to climate change and global warming – this is a Corbyn which has reignited old memories and dreams of the 1960 and 70s generation. It is almost like a redux of the great students’ uprising in Sorbonne and Paris in France in 1968, and the debates which followed across the world in redefining a paradigm shift in the world order, in terms of values and institutions, including in the academia, family, industry, justice systems, and the State.
This was a generation of rebellion, and though Corbyn is not leading a similar eclectic or spontaneous rebellion like shooting stars in the sky with rainbow coalitions and a counter culture philosophy, he is surely giving a more reasoned, balanced and parallel political dream sequence to both Britain and the European Union. Indeed, despite Brexit, his popularity has only risen higher than expected, with a hung Parliament as testimony to this new phenomenon.
Hence the dilemma for the Blairites as much as it is for Theresa May, who is walking a tight-rope with fledgeling support from unreliable partners. In the days to come, undoubtedly, the Corbyn phenomenon will mark a radical shift in British politics, with a new political and aesthetic culture dominating the discourse. How far that discourse will change the face of the country and Europe, only time will tell. However, this parallel cinema is a running documentary, and it is unfolding each day, though Corbyn is not growing any younger. Truly, his rise and rise will surely lead to a new legitimacy for the ‘socialist’ and social welfare project and redefine the shape of corporate capitalism
Surely, even as the world was in despair after the victory of Donald Trump, the rise of both centrist, anti-Nazi and socialist forces in Germany, France and Britain, along with strong radical and progressive forces in Spain and Greece, marks a rupture in world politics. In that sense, the new socialist in Britain’s Labour horizon is the new red star in the sky. Clearly, the long march has already begun.