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

Abstract

Since his election to British Labour’s leadership in 2015 Jeremy Corbyn has excelled in defying expectations. Labour’s unanticipated surge in the 2017 British election is a compelling example. This article argues that Labour’s success was the result of its construction of a vivid and compelling vision of a possible alternative future that could be realised by a Labour government. This was a far-reaching conceptualisation of a different type of society, invested with substantial emotional energy, presented as a realistic alternative to the status quo that could be built through practical and immediate political action. This article conceptualises this form of future imagining as the development of a ‘concrete utopia’ as famously theorised by Ernst Bloch. It demonstrates how this concept was embedded in Labour’s 2017 election campaign through consideration of its well-received party manifesto.