Abstract
This article contributes to a burgeoning literature on political leadership, offering an interim assessment of Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as leader of the UK Labour party. At the time of writing, the candidate of the party’s Left had been leader for a mere seven months. Media commentators and pundits have been critical of Corbyn’s platform and performance, gleefully predicting his imminent demise. On the other hand, the ‘Corbynistas’ who swelled Labour’s ranks in the aftermath of the 2015 defeat have remained steadfast and committed supporters. Their hope is not only that Labour will win the next election, but that Corbyn can recast the landscape of British politics by challenging the economic and political establishment which has assented to the growth of inequality and austerity.
Highlights
Making predictions about what might happen in 2020 on the basis of Corbyn’s leadership since September 2015 is a perilous task
Empirical evidence indicates that ‘leadership image’ is defined early in a leader’s tenure (Bale, 2015); leaders of the opposition have found it almost impossible to escape negative perceptions formed at the beginning of their period of office, as the Conservative party discovered under William Hague and Iain Duncan Smith, and Labour found under Ed Miliband (Richards, 2016)
A set of criteria has been developed within American political science, analysing leadership through the investigation of behavioural and cognitive traits (Foley, 2008; Greenstein, 2009)
Summary
Making predictions about what might happen in 2020 on the basis of Corbyn’s leadership since September 2015 is a perilous task. He was regarded as a maverick and serial rebel with few allies in the parliamentary party; he had long-standing ties to Irish republicanism (Fenton, 2015) while allegedly expressing sympathy with Hamas and Iran in the Middle-East (Finlay, 2015) It was precisely Corbyn’s lack of conventional qualifications, his status as the heroic ‘anti-candidate’ that enabled him to win (McKibbin, 2015). Corbyn rejects the moderate and pragmatic tradition of post-war leadership espoused in very different ways by Attlee, Wilson, Callaghan, Kinnock, Smith, Blair and Brown In this sense, Corbyn’s ascendency marks a watershed in the politics of the Labour party, and in the nature of British political leadership. They insist that policies should be pursued according to whether they are right in principle, irrespective of whether they enable Labour to win elections (Richards, 2016)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
