A fixture of British politics for four decades, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was born in Wiltshire in 1949. His father David, an electrical engineer and mother Naomi, a maths teacher, were both peace-campaigners and Labour Party members, who met at a London rally supporting the cause of the Spanish Republic during the Spanish Civil War. After attending a grammar school in Shropshire - where he was one of only two Labour-supporting students and left with two E-grade A-Levels - and briefly a technical college in North London, he volunteered abroad in Jamaica and Latin America.
Corbyn had a middle-class childhood, spending much of his youth in a sprawling manor home in a Conservative-voting village in the West Midlands. He learned of his politics at the family dinner table where left-wing causes and social justice were frequent topics of debate. Despite his comfortable upbringing, Corbyn himself joined the Labour party at the tender age of 16 and he was an active member of the Young Socialists and the League Against Cruel Sports as a teenager while still at school.
He was elected to Parliament in the 1983 general election for the safe Labour seat of Islington North, a working-class area close to central London. From there, he backed every significant left-wing cause and championed human rights and pacifist causes. He was also a serial rebel against his party’s leadership in more than 500 votes in the House of Commons over the last three decades - serving as a thorn in the side of centrist Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, notably over the Iraq war - which he voted against and chaired the Stop the War Coalition. He was active in campaigns for the UK to give up its nuclear weapons and was a consistent opponent of the Middle East policies supported by successive U.S. and Israeli governments.
He experienced the wrath of the Labour party early in his 32-year career on the backbenches, when he invited two former IRA prisoners to speak at Westminster, two weeks after the IRA had bombed Brighton’s Grand Hotel during the Conservative conference - coming close to killing Margaret Thatcher and her cabinet. Later on, it would be his willingness to share platforms with representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah, who he famously described the groups as his “friends” (a statement he later said he regretted), that would put him at the center of controversy. When challenged, he insists he does not share their views but that peace will never be achieved without talking to all sides.
Corbyn never sought—and was never offered—any kind of ministerial office during Labour’s 13 years in power (1997–2010) under Prime Ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. But despite being side-lined by his party and the House of Commons, a lifetime building up protest credentials endeared him to waves of young voters disillusioned with mainstream politics. Labour's poor performance at the 2015 general election prompted Ed Miliband to resign as party leader, triggering a contest to find a successor. The party’s rules required would-be candidates to be nominated by 35 MPs (out of Labour’s postelection total of 232), and Corbyn could muster the support of only 20. However, in the hours before the close of nominations on June 15, at least 14 additional MPs who did not endorse Corbyn’s policies or actually want him to win agreed to nominate him in an effort to ensure a wider debate in the leadership contest. He was an outsider candidate in the race but his campaign suddenly took off as his uncompromising political outlook inspired many of the party’s members and supporters who were disillusioned by New Labour and attracted thousands of new ones who spread his message of social media, using the hashtag #Jezwecan. In a remarkable revival in a brand of left-wing Labour politics which looked to have been consigned to history, he went from relative obscurity to an unlikely political star and won the leadership with ease, securing 59.5 percent support, three times that of any other candidate.
Corbyn’s journey as leader of the opposition has been a bumpy ride. He has faced sharp criticism over accusations of anti-Semitism within the Labour party. Although he has condemned antisemitism, he has been criticized for some of his past associations and his weak response to the allegations. Endless infighting eventually led to a leadership crisis in the summer of 2016 following the EU referendum, but they failed to unseat him. Corbyn then went on to lead the party to a much better than expected result in the 2017 snap general election. He made the case for a different kind of government in line with principles he has held since he first entered politics more than 40 years ago, drawing large enthusiastic crowds on the campaign trail and attracting waves of new supporters, especially among the young, which further cemented his authority.
Corbyn has been a Eurosceptic for most of his political life. He opposed membership of the then-EEC at the 1975 referendum and happily stood on the 1983 Labour manifesto calling for withdrawal. He has been suspicious of an organization where he believes unelected Brussels bureaucrats have a huge influence - including initiating legislation. But his views seem to have evolved - accommodating, the aspirations of some of the newer, younger pro-EU members. He supported Remain in the 2016 referendum but has been criticized by some inside and outside the party for what they considered his “lukewarm” campaigning and for changing his stance on the EU many times since the referendum. As it stands, the Labour party are pledging to hold Labour still pledge to hold a second referendum if they win in the elections next month, but will try to negotiate a withdrawal agreement with the EU first and will implement whatever option the public vote for.
Ahead of next month's general election, a new poll by Ipsos MORI suggested that Corbyn is the most unpopular opposition party leader of the past 45 years. Corbyn’s troubles are most visible in Labour’s northern heartlands according to recent YouGov polling. In the north-west, the party scored 30 percent, down 25 from its 2017 general election result. Boris Johnson’s Tories are polling at 33 percent. Even in London, there was a sizeable drop for Labour, which is down from 55 percent in 2017 to 39.
