Why Jeremy Corbyn likes Trump
British Labour leader sees the billionaire’s victory as proof that the liberal center is dead.
By
CHARLIE COOPER AND
TOM MCTAGUE
11/11/16, 4:31 PM CET
Updated 11/11/16, 4:33 PM CET
LONDON — In the topsy-turvy world of 2016, the election of Donald Trump in the U.S. has given hope to hard-left Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn in the U.K.
While Bernie Sanders was in tears, Corbyn’s supporters were quietly much more sanguine about the demagogic billionaire’s victory — proof, they believe, that the liberal center is dead; that the untested and radical are the ones who triumph in the new politics of the West.
Although diametrically opposed in terms of values and temperament, Trump and Corbyn have more in common than first meets the eye.
Deficit spending to get people back to work? Tick. American isolationism? Tick.Opposition to free trade and skepticism about globalization? Tick and tick.
Corbyn’s shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry acknowledged the similarities on BBC Radio 4’s Today program Thursday.
“I don’t think it would be right to say Jeremy welcomes [Trump’s win] but I think he recognizes what is happening,” she said.
The Labour leader himself also noted the parallels in his response to the news of Trump’s victory.
The billionaire’s election was “an unmistakable rejection of a political establishment and an economic system that simply isn’t working for most people,” Corbyn said. “It is one that has delivered escalating inequality and stagnating or falling living standards for the majority, both in the U.S. and Britain.”
Or as one of Corbyn’s senior aides put it: “The political center is being totally remade.”
Labour members’ rejection of their own party’s more centrist approach under Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband is precisely what carried Corbyn to the leadership.
His team believe that a significant portion of the disaffected, left-behind voters who backed Trump in the U.S. would have supported Sanders if he had been the Democratic nominee — and that same constituency in Britain could swing behind Sanders’ socialist comrade Corbyn.
But Labour has sunk in the polls, and its pro-Remain stance in the EU referendum was rejected by a third of its supporters. The anti-politics, anti-establishment sentiment that Corbyn has identified was, in the U.K., already given vent by the vote for Brexit, where Labour was on the losing side.
Theresa May, by contrast, has not wasted time in characterizing herself as the champion of all of those who voted to leave the EU, including that one-third of Labour supporters, who she attempted to woo in a party conference speech last month that promised a big state, measures to reduce income inequality and — crucially — characterized immigration as a problem for working-class people. Corbyn is also much softer on immigration.
Trump’s victory will likely confirm May’s belief that a hardline stance on immigration — combined with the pose of being a champion to people left behind by economic growth — is a winning formula for politicians on the Right to erode the Left’s base.
At the moment, the idea of Corbyn delivering a Trump-sized upset in British politics appears remote but, as Thornberry reminded the BBC Thursday, things change quickly these days.
This insight is from POLITICO’s Brexit Files newsletter, a daily afternoon digest of the best coverage and analysis of Britain’s decision to leave the EU. Read today’s edition or subscribe here.
Why Jeremy Corbyn likes Trump
