Corbyn
And Sanders Most Popular Politicians In Britain And US
Saeed Naqvi
The recent rise in the electability of
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn as Britain’s next Prime Minister, according
to the latest opinion polls, has not made headline news. This is not surprising
because Establishments everywhere, of which the media is a part, imagine that
an idea can be made to vanish by playing it down.
The findings of the poll have been
published even in conservative newspapers like The Telegraph in London. This virtually
amounts to a taboo being lifted from the idea of Corbyn. Call it acquiescence,
if you like.
Senior Labour leaders, indeed authors of
New Labour, like Tony Blair and Lord Peter Mandelson must be close to a nervous
breakdown. Or, they must be working very hard, as Mandelson has admitted in
interviews, to “undermine Corbyn”.
The difficulty with mean-minded cribbing
by Mandelson is that it generates sympathy among Corbyn’s growing tribe of
supporters. Take this quote from a Labour member: “The idea that Jeremy Corbyn
as Prime Minister implementing policies that actually benefit the people
terrifies the Establishment. It is no surprise that Mandelson has found space
in his busy schedule for spending time on Oligarch’s Yachts to attempt to
undermine Jeremy.”
This being the tone of the exchange,
Corbyn’s path to eventual success will be made ever more difficult by the Establishment
of which Mandelson and the Deep State are parts.
There is, however, a tailwind of recent
history particular to Britain, which may be helping Corbyn.
Accelerated globalization after the
Soviet collapse, was a shot in the arm for capitalism. This, in its turn,
generated arbitrary inequalities which erupted in such movements as “Occupy
Wall Street”. The Republican Tea Party was the immediate counter punch.
The popular will adapts to changing
climate. Establishments, obstinately resistant to change, begin to strategize:
how to channelize or thwart the popular will.
In almost all western democracies the
conflict is on: Establishments vs. the people. A Left wing Syriza brought 43
year old Alexis Tsipras to power as Prime Minister of Greece. Germany and the
EU broke the movement’s will. Revert to austerity or we shall not pick up your
debts.
In Spain, where the ghost of Franco
still hovers over public life, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of the Right Wing
Peoples Party, supervised over such unspeakable corruption (another gift of
globalization), that a new communist-inclined party Podemos, under the
leadership of 39 year old Pablo Iglesias, burst upon the scene. The resulting
stalemate between the Peoples Party, Socialist and Podemos led to a repeat
election which yielded more or less the same configuration. The Establishment
worked overtime. On the pain of being decimated, Socialists allowed themselves
to be persuaded to abstain in a Parliamentary vote. This enabled the corrupt PP
hold onto power. The idea is to weaken and eventually erase Podemos by sheer
attrition and election fatigue.
In the process of warding off unfriendly
political trends, the establishment learnt another lesson. The sprinkling of
leaders breaking out of the two party suffocation were all anti austerity,
leftists and in their 30s and 40s. Why could not the “right” respond with
similar décor and aspirations?
That exactly is what has been attempted
in Spain by launching Ciudadanos, (Citizens) a centrist party with an unusual rise
on an anti corruption platform. I met people in Madrid and Barcelona who
described the new party as “Podemos of the right”. In terms of youth, Ciudadanos
is an improvement. Its leader, Albert Rivera, 35, is four years younger than
Pablo Iglesias.
“They are stealing Podemos’ aesthetics” laments
Madrid’s Communist Mayor who hung a giant placard outside her office: “Refugees
Welcome”. She tweets “We are not going to criminalize the Muslim community”
Carmena said. “The response to terror must be solidarity.” Her punchline was
“co existence = safer cities”.
The aesthetics which define young
leaders in Greece, Spain, Canada appear to have been grafted on France’s
Emmanuel Macron too. He is their age and talks of influencing the EU to reduce
the burden of austerity. The scale of his success has encouraged him to be
openly ambidextrous. He has invited
Donald Trump to the National Day parade on July 14. This despite Trump having
withdrawn from the Paris accord on climate change.
In brief, different kinds of gyrations
define western democracies today. In this over all confused picture another
reality remains largely unnoticed.
A Fox News poll published some months
ago (mostly ignored) shows that Bernie Sanders has a +28 rating above all US
politicians on both ends of the political spectrum.
The Guardian’s Trevor Timm wrote
recently: “One would think with numbers like that, Democratic politicians would
be falling all over themselves to be associated with Sanders, especially
considering the party as a whole is more unpopular than the
Republicans and even Donald Trump right now. Yet instead of embracing his
message, the Establishment wing of the party continues to resist him at almost
every turn, and they seem insistent that they don’t have to change their ways
to gain back the support of huge swaths of the country.”
The moral of the story is this: a
rattled Establishment is in many democracies rushing to thwart or redirect the
popular will – and with mixed success.
Against this backdrop, there appears on
the horizon a certain British exceptionalism. Jeremy Corbyn’s election as
Labour leader despite Tony Blair, Mandelson, and the Parliamentary party, results
of the Brexit referendum, the manner in which Theresa May was trounced in June
8 elections – all point to the Establishment in Britain unlike elsewhere, clearly
contained by the people.
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