What were they thinking? It's probably a question that many in the parliamentary party are wondering following the leadership election in which Jeremy Corban, 66, was the recipient of 60% of the general membership vote.
As former British Prime Minister John Major (Conservative) said in a TV interview a few years ago, "you can be as left wing or as right wing as you like, but you're not going to win elections unless you capture the middle ground." The other interviewee on the program, one of Labour's former leaders, Neil Kinnock, agreed.
So what will the populace make of a pacifist who is a sharp critic of American foreign policy and of Israel and appeals to the angry, insurgent mood among trade unionists and many young people over inequality in capitalism?
Well, he'll get votes from them, but not from the middle ground. His election is effectively a reaction to the rightwards political shift that was obvious in the May general election and saw the Conservatives win enough seats to govern alone (mainly at the expense of the centrist Liberal Democrats) and saw the anti-immigrant UKIP win 13% of the vote, although only one seat.
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