UK Labour mobilises to push Corbyn into power

Corbyn’s re-election as Labour leader in 2016 — when the vast majority of his MPs lost confidence in his leadership — was in no small part down to Momentum’s enthusiastic campaigning.

Now Corbyn, who can claim to have tripled Labour’s membership to 570,000 in two years, seems secure in his post following the June general election, when his campaign focused on anti-austerity defied predictions of a landslide defeat.

In some opinion polls, Labour are now ahead of the Conservatives.

“The election has changed politics in this country,” Corbyn said in a recent interview with The Guardian newspaper.

– Risk of over-confidence –

Even some on the right are not ruling out the left’s chances of coming to power.

It could come to pass if the government cannot overcome its divisions on Brexit, said former foreign secretary and Conservative ex-leader William Hague.

The Economist magazine considers Corbyn as “Britain’s most likely next prime minister”.

Professor Fielding said it was “more than possible” that Corbyn would end up in power if there was another general election within the next 12 months.

But there is a risk of over-confidence.

“We forget that he lost the general election and the conduct (of the campaign) on the Tory side was so poor it’s hard to believe that could be repeated,” said Iain Begg, a professorial research fellow at the London School of Economics university’s European Institute.

“Britain is ultimately quite a conservative country,” he added.

Corbyn is particularly popular with students and young graduates, but they are heavily concentrated in urban parliamentary seats and university cities, Fielding said.

Corbyn needs to reach out to older and more traditional Labour supporters in areas that backed Britain leaving the European Union in order to win enough seats to overtake the Conservatives, Fielding added.