Corbynism and its Aftermath

In the summer of 2015, all but one of Labour's leadership hopefuls committed to ‘austerity’: that blend of cuts to public spending and tax increases that might more accurately be labelled ‘Osbornomics’. The contrast between Jeremy Corbyn and the other candidates competing to take the place of Ed Miliband was sharp. Corbyn, until then a relatively unknown MP who had spent his entire career fighting for lost causes on Labour's back benches, had been a vocal critic of Blair. New Labour, for its part, had successfully hegemonised the Labour Party: its style, personnel and ‘realist’ outlook persisting even after five years under the more left-leaning Ed Miliband, a fact that the preference for ‘balanced budgets’ held by Labour's other leadership candidates testified to. Often seen as a deeply principled politician, it is fair to suggest that context had caught up with the outlook of Jeremy Corbyn, rather than the other way around.