How Jeremy Corbyn brought labour back to the future: visions of the future and concrete utopia in labour’s 2017 electoral campaign

Byrne, Liam

doi:10.1057/s41293-019-00123-6

Cited by 5 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…First, ideology: how left-wing Labour's policies should be; and second, democracy and populism: Corbynism was either anti-democratic and authoritarian populist or 'left-populist' and democratising. With regards to ideology, Corbyn's strategists and supporters never seemed to doubt that Corbynism's surprise appeal stemmed from its left-wing politics (Martell, 2018;Byrne, 2019;Airas, 2018;Massey, 2015). However, media pundits and scholars insisted that if Labour were to be elected to government they would either have to return to the centre and appeal to the median voter or somehow overturn these central tenets of majoritarian electoral theory (Blair, 2015;Crines, 2015, 7;Bale, 2016a, 7;2016b, 19;Honeyman, 2018, 15).…”

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confidence: 99%

“…These concerns were intensified by the clash between Corbyn's supporters and the PLP. Although this was defended as a valiant attempt to democratise a party, using 'left populist' strategies to return it to its grassroots and free it from the grip of the establishment (Martell, 2018;Airas, 2018;Massey, 2015;Byrne, 2019) it was interpreted by critics as an undemocratic threat to our representative system seeking to build a shallow populist movement through appeal to conspiracy theories (Baggini, 2016;Bolton and Pitts, 2020); or.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Too left-wing or not populist enough? Using Laclau and Mouffe to rethink Corbynism and future left strategy in the UK

Woodford

2022

Br Polit

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Jeremy Corbyn's dramatic rise and fall created a problem for left political strategists in the UK. Contradictory explanations centre around two broad areas. First, ideology: Corbynism was either too left-wing or not left-wing enough; and second, democracy and populism: Corbynism was either anti-democratic and authoritarian populist or 'left-populist' and democratising. The centrality of these debates to the Corbyn literature implies that strategists today face a dilemma. Either consolidate the Labour party as a radical left-wing grassroots movement against the PLP, or a centre-left party that re-establishes PLP authority. Indeed, Keir Starmer is already interpreted to have aligned himself with the latter of these two options. This paper offers an original interpretation of Laclau and Mouffe's theory of populism to demonstrate that this is a false dichotomy which not only risks unnecessarily restricting Labour party strategy but potentially has severe ramifications for how we understand left-wing politics in Britain more widely.

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confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Too left-wing or not populist enough? Using Laclau and Mouffe to rethink Corbynism and future left strategy in the UK

Woodford

2022

Br Polit

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“…Ever since Corbyn's astonishing rise from backbencher to leader, political scientists have examined the ways in which his tenure has affected Labour's beliefs and practices -from electoral campaigning to party management. Work has analysed the coherence of Corbyn's ideological agenda and vision (Byrne, 2019); its connection with with Labour's past policy programmes (Manwaring and Smith, 2020); Corbyn's campaign successes compared to Conservative prime minister Theresa May's campaign failures (Dorey, 2017); Corbyn's management of the Labour Party, and its characterisation as 'populism' within a party (Watts and Bale, 2019); and how Corbyn's arrival as leader affected Labour's membership, including increased numbers of people joining Labour 'who might be labelled 'left behind'' economically (Whiteley et al, 2019: 95). Closest perhaps to our approach here -seeking to understand Corbyn's leadership holistically, with a focus on the meanings constitutive of the leadership project -is the conclusion from Bolton and Pitts regarding Labour's immigration policy, a position we consider further below.…”

Section: The Corbyn Mythmentioning

confidence: 99%

Myth and meaning: ‘Corbynism’ and the interpretation of political leadership

Pike

Diamond

2021

The British Journal of Politics and International Relations

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In its contribution to the study of political leadership, this article provides a distinctive analytical lens: political myth understood as meanings which animate a leadership project. Heavily constitutive of political leadership at a particular moment in time, political myths are important for understanding the resilience of a leadership project and the judgements of its actors. We demonstrate a way of applying this concept through an analysis of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership from 2015 to 2020 and the identification of four key elements of the ‘Corbyn myth’: a ‘mould-breaking’ stance on policy, a return to class politics for Labour, heralding a ‘left wave’ sweeping the world, and the moral and political repudiation of the Iraq War. Each element clearly emphasises the explicit rejection of New Labour. Our analysis provides a holistic account of the Corbyn project with greater specificity about the meanings attached to Corbyn’s leadership by supporters.

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“…As Corbynism drifts from the headlines of today into the footnotes of tomorrow the need to understand the origins, causes and nature of Labour's experiment are paramount. Was it a blast from the past, as argued by Kerr et al (2018), or a herald to the future, as Byrne (2019) suggests? Was it a radical experiment or a more diverse coalition (see Maiguashca and Dean 2019)?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

To build a new Jezrusalem: an historical institutionalist analysis of the origins of the Corbyn era in the Labour party

Monahan

2021

Br Polit

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Now that Corbynism has passed, an institutional explanation for his sudden control of the British Labour party allows for a richer understanding of the process by which his leadership came about. In particular this analysis develops on the established institutional theory ideas of reactivation, invasion and veto players; and adds the role of "veto complacency". These theoretical mechanisms are key to understanding why the British Labour party changed so radically after its 2015 electoral defeat, and why it is suspect to argue that its then leader, Jeremy Corbyn, represented merely a return to the past. The ideas of the Corbyn movement can be understood as having been a contemporary adaptation of socialism, namely "new socialism". This case study highlights the usefulness of applying institutional theory mechanisms to explanations of party change; and seeks to expand on current dominant theories of institutional change that appear less capable of explaining sudden radical endogenous change-as exhibited here by the British Labour party.

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How Jeremy Corbyn brought labour back to the future: visions of the future and concrete utopia in labour’s 2017 electoral campaign

Cited by 5 publications

References 28 publications

Too left-wing or not populist enough? Using Laclau and Mouffe to rethink Corbynism and future left strategy in the UK

Too left-wing or not populist enough? Using Laclau and Mouffe to rethink Corbynism and future left strategy in the UK

Myth and meaning: ‘Corbynism’ and the interpretation of political leadership

To build a new Jezrusalem: an historical institutionalist analysis of the origins of the Corbyn era in the Labour party

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