British Labour Party members and paid participants in the party’s private leadership election (something akin to a U.S. primary) have chosen Jeremy Corbyn, the member of Parliament for Islington North, as their new leader.
Corbyn, an open admirer of Karl Marx and a columnist for a newspaper that was originally an organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, replaces Ed Miliband, who resigned in May after the party’s catastrophic performance in this year’s general election.
Having lost 26 seats in Parliament despite many polls predicting victory, Labour has chosen a new direction. Overwhelmingly, its members rejected the more moderate course taken by former Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown in favor of a much more leftist course.
The conventional wisdom is that Corbyn’s radicalism will scare Britons. It’s not just because of the standard left-wing commitment to high taxes (including a windfall tax) and the like — here is a brief look at some of his more controversial ideas and public statements.
‘People’s QE’
Corbyn has proposed the printing of new money, which would be used as a means of directly financing a much higher level of government spending. He refers to this as a “People’s Quantitative Easing,” but it differs vastly from the standard QE that most central banks engage in to promote price stability.
Critics charge that such an overt policy of debasing the pound in order to fatten the government’s coffers would be ruinous for Britain’s economy and also a violation of EU rules.
Nationalization
Corbyn supports the nationalization of certain British industries, including the energy sector and the railways.
Terrorism
Corbyn, who has long supported Irish reunification, was an Irish Republican Army sympathizer who in 1984 invited Gerry Adams to Westminster. Adams was, at that time, the public face and voice of a leftist Irish Republican terrorist movement that was still very busy blowing people up. Weeks before Corbyn’s invitation, the IRA had killed five and injured several others when it bombed a Conservative Party conference in Brighton. The attack was a failed attempt to assassinate Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
Today a member of the Irish parliament, Adams was among the first to congratulate Corbyn on his victory earlier today.
More recently, Corbyn referred to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and described it as an “honor and pleasure” to host them. He has demanded both terrorist groups’ inclusion in the Middle East peace process.
Corbyn maintains that despite his use of the word “friends,” he does not agree with either of those terrorist groups or their activities, but that “to bring about a peace profess, you have to talk to people with whom you profoundly disagree.”
Corbyn has also defended at least one prominent Sept. 11 truther (of the variety that claims Israel plotted the attack), hosted a call-in show on Iranian state television, and apparently donated money to a well-known Holocaust denier.
Foreign affairs
Corbyn is chairman of an organization called Stop the War UK, which currently accuses the United States (and, by extension, President Obama) of waging a proxy war against Russia in Ukraine — recall that Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 and annexed part of its territory.
Nuclear disarmament
Corbyn has long supported the unilateral nuclear disarmament of Britain.
Monarchy
In one radical position that’s more relatable to Americans, Corbyn is a small-R republican — which is to say, he favors abolition of the British monarchy. In 1994, he demanded a vote in the House of Commons to abolish it. He has leaked word that he will refuse to sit on the council that traditionally advises the queen — it would be the first time any opposition leader ever did so.
