Jeremy Corbyn
| Jeremy Corbyn | |
|---|---|
|
| |
| Name | Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May, 1949) |
| Nicknames | Jezza C (fandom), The Beige Man of Islington (fandom) |
| Politics | |
| Party | Labour |
| Constituency | Islington North (1983 - present) |
| Likes | Socialism, council housing, nationalising things, Palestine, cricket, Arsenal, beige |
| Dislikes | Apartheid, grammar schools, nuclear weapons, tuition fees, the Iraq War |
| Friends | Tony Benn, Diane Abbott |
| Enemies | Butthurt Blairite journalists, Augusto Pinochet |
| Relationships | |
| Partners | Laura Alvarez (2013 - present) Claudia Bracchitta (1985 - 1997, divorced) |
| Children | Benjamin (1988), Sebastian (?), Thomas (?) |
| Personal Attributes | |
| Nationality | English |
| Religion | ? |
| Sexuality | Straight |
| Height | 5' 9" |
| Eye Colour | Blue |
| Handedness | Right |
| Accent | Estuary |
Corbyn is such an unlikely leader, so devoted to the collective that he can’t even bear to refer to himself in the first person. It's always 'we'.~ Simon Hattenstone
A surprise late entrant to the 2015 Labour leadership contest, Jeremy Corbyn is best known for his beige suits and his colourful far left politics. A die-hard socialist and anti-war campaigner, he is the most leftwing candidate to stand for the Labour leadership since Tony Benn lost to Neil Kinnock in 1988.
Life and Career[edit | edit source]
I hitchhiked down to London and got a ride in a lorry. We were going along Holloway Road, and the driver said, "Where do you want me to drop you?" I had no idea where I was. I saw Ronalds Road and I liked the name. "Drop me here," I said. That was my introduction to London. And here I am now forty years later, MP for the area. MP for Ronalds Road!~ Jeremy Corbyn
Early Life[edit | edit source]
Jeremy is the second son of the electrical engineer David B. Corbyn, a leading expert in power rectifiers, and his wife, a grammar school maths teacher. Like Jeremy, his parents were active peace campaigners- they met campaigning on the Spanish Civil War. Jeremy was born in Chippenham in Wiltshire, but the family moved to Shropshire when he was seven.
His mother taught her sons to love modern fiction and modern history. On Jeremy's sixteenth birthday she gave him a collection of George Orwell's essays and told him to decide what he believed and be prepared to stand up for it. Seldom has any parental advice been taken so much to heart.
Jeremy attended the prestigious Adams Grammar School in Newport, Shropshire, but he was a poor student. Increasingly politicised by issues like environmentalism, CND, and Vietnam, he was too distracted to attend to his studies and left at 18 with two A-levels, grade E. Instead of uni, he went to Jamaica for two years to volunteer with VSO. When he was returned to England he moved to London and enrolled in the North London Polytechnic, but he dropped out before completing the course.
Early Political Career[edit | edit source]
After dropping out Jeremy worked for several trade unions and rose to become a national organiser for the National Union of Public Employees. He also served on a health authority. In 1974 he was elected to Haringey Council, where he served until he was elected to Parliament in 1983.
Parliamentary Career[edit | edit source]
The thing about Corbyn is that he is nearly always proved right – after the event.~ Simon Hattenstone
Since the very start of his parliamentary career, Jeremy has been a tireless campaigner for every leftwing cause under the sun. He opposed Apartheid and served on the National Executive of the Anti-Apartheid Movement. In 1984, just one year after he was elected, he was one of eight politicians arrested for breaking a protest ban outside London's South African embassy. He is a strong advocate for Palestine and supports the BDS movement. He went to Moscow to campaign on behalf of Chechnya, and campaigns in Westminster on behalf of the forcibly-resettled Chagossians.
He is vehemently opposed to nuclear weapons and has been campaigning for CND since the 1970s. He's currently a vice-chair in the organisation and chairs the CND All-Party Parliamentary Group as well. He opposed British intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq and spoke at many anti-war protests and peace rallies in Britain and overseas, as well as serving on the Stop the War Coalition steering committee. He was one of the twelve Labour MPs who joined Plaid Cymru and the SNP's call for an inquiry into the Iraq War.
Closer to home, he is a long-standing supporter of a united Ireland and advocated talking to Sinn Féin decades before it became a mainstream position. He campaigned for the innocence of the Guildford Four and the Birmingham Six, and for the extradition of murderous Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet. He opposed the curtailment of civil liberties under New Labour.
He campaigned for animal rights and against tuition fees. He opposed academies and PFI, and supports the renationalisation of the railways. He's also a fierce anti-austerity and anti-poverty campaigner who wants a higher minimum wage, rent controls for London and more social housing.
Jeremy's uncompromising and catholic Leftyness has frequently put him at odds with the Labour leadership. Although he is generally vindicated by history in most of his crusades, this is of little help to populist Labour leaders a decade before his positions become mainstream. Jeremy is one of the most rebellious MPs in the Commons: in the 2005-2010 Parliament he rebelled on 25% of all votes. This awkwardness has kept him miles away from the frontbench. He has also eschewed the traditional Bennite tactic of seeking control of the Labour Party's internal committees in order to control the party's agenda. Jeremy is one of the few politicians who genuinely does seem to prefer protest to power.
One author described him thus:
He also has a great sense of humour as proven by the fact that he backed Tony Bank's "Pigeon Bomb" Early Day Motion which ran thusly:
2015 Leadership Contest[edit | edit source]
All of us felt the leadership contest was not a good idea - there should have been a policy debate first. There wasn’t, so we decided somebody should put their hat in the ring in order to promote that debate. And, unfortunately, it’s my hat in the ring.~ Jeremy Corbyn
When Ed Miliband resigned as Labour Leader after the party's grim defeat in the 2015 General Election, it quickly became clear that the party would be offered a choice of New Labour in Blairite, Brownite and Everton flavours. Jon Trickett whined incessantly about how the party wasn't getting a real choice because there was no leftwing candidate standing, but he wouldn't stand himself and the only other person who seemed like a viable option, Ian Lavery, had already committed to backing Andy Burnham.
After this had dragged on for a few weeks and everyone was heartily sick of listening to the leadership candidates mindlessly burble "Aspiration!" like some kind of New Labour Hari Krishnas while Jon Trickett whined in the background, the SCG realised that if there was going to be any intelligent debate about the future direction of the party it would have to come from them. Diane Abbott and John McDonnell pointed out that they had already stood for the leadership as the Left's sacrificial lambs, so now it was Jeremy's turn. He had never held a party or ministerial office of any kind and had no leadership ambitions whatsoever, but he reluctantly agreed. He probably hopes he'll lose even more than the Blairites do.
Jeremy's hopes of losing the election were dealt a blow when he was endorsed by Unite, Britain's biggest trade union and the largest donor to the Labour Party. They were dealt another major blow when Unison, the moderate public sector trade union that had originally planned to endorse Yvette, unexpectedly endorsed him as well. The Telegraph also jumped on the Corbyn bandwagon, helpfully printing an easy 5 step explanation for their readers regarding how to join the party and get Jeremy elected leader titled "How you can help Jeremy Corbyn win - and destroy the Labour Party".
Corbyn swiftly climbed to second and then to first place in the Constituency Labour Party nominations, and an investigation by The New Statesman revealed that private polling by two of the other Labour leadership contenders put Jeremy in the lead to win first preference votes by as much as 15 points[3]. This freaked out the rightwing Labour pressure group Labour First so much that they tried to organise a tactical voting campaign against him. In theory this should not have been difficult, since many CLP nominations are voted on by less than fifty members and all they really needed to do was to get a few of their people to show up to the meetings. In practice the organisational capacity of a wing of the party that couldn't get someone more credible than Liz Kendall onto the ballot paper proved inadequate to the challenge.
In recognition of the unexpected success of his campaign, Jeremy's supporters started using the mildly cute hashtag "#JezWeCan" and the press coined the godawful phrase "Stormin' Corbyn", which comes about as close to rhyming as Jeremy will to Number 10.
Panic within the Labour Party reached a fevered pitch on July 21st, when a YouGov poll revealed that Jeremy was poised to slaughter everyone else in the first round of voting and win the leadership election by a solid margin even after second and third preferences were reallocated. By the close of the nomination period on 31st July he had secured 154 CLP nominations, the most of any candidate and just eleven short of the 165 David Miliband had won in 2010.
On 12 September it was announced that Jeremy had won the leadership contest with 59.5% (251,417) of the first preference votes[4].
Leader of the Opposition[edit | edit source]
Almost as soon as Jeremy was elected, he went to a "Refugees Welcome" rally. He also sent out emails to everyone on the Labour Party email list, asking crowd-sourcing questions for PMQs. It was also revealed that he had requested a formal meeting with the Speaker of the House of Commons to discuss whether he could have other ministers ask questions at PMQs instead of asking all the questions himself.
Jeremy came under fire for his first Shadow Cabinet. Rather than having a list prepared and out for the Monday morning papers, Jeremy and his team were working through the night and into Monday itself trying to convince people to serve. This would have been a lot easier if he hadn't done things like make John McDonnell his Shadow Chancellor and offer the Honourable Member for Invading Russia the Shadow Defence role. Among all this was the fact that despite claiming to champion diversity, all the top Shadow Cabinet jobs went to white, heterosexual men - John McDonnell as Shadow Chancellor, Andy Burnham as Shadow Home Secretary[5], Hilary Benn as Shadow Foreign Secretary, and with Tom Watson as elected Deputy Leader of the Labour Party and Corbyn himself as Leader, it all felt a bit Not Good. Jeremy's team were monitoring the criticism online and responded by promoting Angela Eagle so that she became First Secretary of State in addition to being Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills - the team referred to this as "doing a Mandelson" in reference to the fact that the Lord had previously held the post. However, Jeremy did stick to his promise to make more than half his Shadow Cabinet women - 16 women to 15 men. Many people thought this wasn't exactly what they had been promised, however, as some of Jeremy's Shadow Cabinet weren't actually shadowing any Cabinet members and the positions held by women weren't as important as shadowing the Great Offices of State. In response, Jeremy's team issued a statement claiming that people who thought that way were "stuck in the 18th century" if they didn't believe Education and Health weren't as important as the Home Office and Treasury.
Jeremy also got a great deal of criticism for refusing to sign the national anthem at a Battle of Britain remembrance ceremony at St Paul’s Cathedral.
Personal Life[edit | edit source]
I hated that period. I hated the publicity for it. I hated the pressure put on my kids as a result of it, and it was very unpleasant and very intrusive.~ Jeremy Corbyn, on his divorce and the resulting press furore
Jeremy is intensely private about his personal life, which is why his third son is named "???" in his infobox. This follows in a proud tradition: past editions of the official textbook on MPs' lives compiled by the journalist Andrew Roth displayed a row of question marks next to the entry on whether Jeremy was married, as Jeremy refused to say. When Roth pointed out that all the other MPs had answered the question, Jeremy replied that it was nobody else's business.[6]
If anything, he has only grown more reticent since then due to bitter experience. Jeremy is sort of the anti-Diane Abbott- white, male, and self-effacing, with an absolute commitment to comprehensive eduction. Not only did he not decide to send his own child to a grammar school to get him out of the failing comp in his inner London catchment area after a lifetime of campaigning against selective education, he divorced his former wife Claudia when she insisted on it.
Their marriage had been struggling anyway, but the battle over where to send their eldest son Ben was the final straw. Claudia thought Ben would be unhappy at the local comprehensive, which had been on Ofsted's failing list for three years. Jeremy couldn't bear to send him to a selective school. No compromise was possible. They had already agreed that Claudia would get primary custody if they separated, so she got to make the final decision. Ben went to a top-rated grammar school nine miles away in Barnet and Jeremy left the marriage.
The couple parted on good terms and actually moved together into separate flats in a shared house after the divorce so their kids could continue to live with both parents.[7] All might have been well, except that two years after the divorce the press got wind of the story.
The combination of personal drama, failing London schools and Labour selective education wank was naturally too good for the rightwing papers to resist. They dredged up the Blair, Harman, and Abbott cases again. Jeremy escaped the charge of hypocrisy but got pilloried for putting political principle before the welfare of his child. Claudia was painted as a pushy parent who wanted a grammar school place for her son and nothing else. Poor Ben had to read a bunch of headlines in national newspapers screaming that he'd caused the breakup of his parents' marriage. The whole episode was horrible for everyone, and Jeremy hasn't spoken about his personal life to the media since.
An additional reason for Jeremy's reticence about his family may be his nutty brother Piers, who runs a business that makes wacky weather predictions based on solar observations and whose politics make Jeremy's look conservative and mainstream.
Jeremy is vegetarian and ascetic in his tastes: he lives modestly and doesn't even own a car. He supports Arsenal - so much so that he once signed an EDM in parliament calling the team the "best club football team in the world"[8] - and likes to grow things on his allotment.
There's a Westminster legend that in the 1980s Jeremy and Diane Abbott toured across East Germany on a motorcycle together[9]. The exact nature of their relationship during the time is unclear, with Jeremy's son's denying any knowledge that the trip took place and Diane herself issuing a blanket "no comment" when questioned[10].
Appearance[edit | edit source]
He is the only man I know who buys his clothes at the Dalston Co-Op~ Anonymous Islington Labour activist
Fifty Shades of Beige
Jeremy is famous in fandom for almost invariably showing up in the Chamber in a beige suit, frequently accompanied by a beige tie. It was once believed he possessed an infinite supply of beige suits.
However, since the 2015 election Jeremy has appeared almost exclusively in a darker khaki number. This has led to speculation that he may in fact own only one suit at a time, which just happened to be beige during the previous Parliament. It has been further speculated that he may be a hobo who lives in a tent.
In the past Jeremy has worn outfits that were not beige. This was a terrible mistake.
Nope
Noooope
Cosplaying as a leprechaun?
It's possible that the beige suits are a strategy he has consciously adopted to protect the public from his fashion sense.
He does however have excellent taste in hats:
Jeremy also has a beard, which he claims is "a form of dissent" against New Labour. He has won the Parliamentary Beard of the Year contest six times since 2001, making him the all-time champion.
Ideology[edit | edit source]
The description of Corbyn as 'hard left' is misleading, in that he is a quietly spoken, gentle individual who does not demand you listen to his opinions. They are the sort of opinions a lot of people hold when they are young, like wanting an end to poverty, hunger, unemployment, imperialism and wars, and wanting the children of poor families to have the same chance in life as middle-class children. What makes him unusual is that he will be 50 in 10 days, and still believes what he believed when he was an underpaid trade union official.~ Andy McSmith
Jeremy is a hardcore socialist and very leftwing on virtually every issue. He's unusual amongst the SCG in that his socialism is highly internationalist. While people like Dennis Skinner and John McDonnell tend to focus more on labour relations and the preservation of the welfare state within the UK, Jeremy spends much of his time showing his solidarity with leftwing causes abroad. He also believes in homeopathy[11].
Dodgy Friends[edit | edit source]
Jeremy never met a leftwing cause he didn't like, no matter who else happened to be supporting it at the time or how many civilians they'd blown up in the process.
He invited Gerry Adams to visit Parliament back in 1984, long before talking to Sinn Féin was considered acceptable by the political mainstream. In that case the political establishment eventually came around to Jeremy's position, but not all his contacts are quite so savoury.
Jeremy is a big fan of Raed Salah, an Israeli Arab community organiser and anti-Zionist activist who makes speeches like this one:
Apparently this was not a reference to the blood libel. If you say so, Raed.
Also:
That, uh, didn't happen. But whatever! Raed is nevertheless a "very honoured citizen" who "represents his people extremely well", according to Jeremy, and "[his] is a voice that must be heard".
At one point Jeremy also said "It is my pleasure and my honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking", and expressed his regret that his friends from Hamas couldn't join them there because of the Israeli travel ban. People have pointed out that decent people don't have friends from Hezbollah and Hamas.
Portrayal[edit | edit source]
In the Media[edit | edit source]
Jeremy can usually be found at protests the media refuses to cover, so apart from the grammar school divorce incident and some rightwing hysteria about the time he invited Gerry Adams to Westminster he's had a low media profile over the years.
His entry into the 2015 Labour leadership contest prompted a spate of gleeful articles from Tories and moany ones from Blairites about how his presence on the ballot paper demonstrated the unelectability and general childishness of the Labour Party, but in general his coverage in the campaign has been positive. He is usually portrayed as an sincere man of conviction, albeit convictions that most of the British electorate don't share.
In Fanon[edit | edit source]
Apart from the speculation about his suits Jeremy has a low fandom profile. He has yet to appear on the meme, probably because there is a lamentable lack of fic in which the SCG have wacky road trip adventures together.
References[edit | edit source]
- ↑ Cowley, Philip (2005). The Rebels: How Blair Mislaid His Majority. Politico's Publishing Ltd.
- ↑ http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2003-04/1255
- ↑ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-leadership-race-jeremy-corbyn-takes-shock-lead-in-battle-to-succeed-ed-miliband-10391640.html
- ↑ http://www.labour.org.uk/blog/entry/results-of-the-labour-leadership-and-deputy-leadership-election
- ↑ replacing Yvette Cooper who had refused to serve under Corbyn during the election campaign
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/may/16/theobserver.uknews
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/uk/1999/may/16/theobserver.uknews
- ↑ http://www.parliament.uk/edm/2003-04/1044
- ↑ http://www.sunnation.co.uk/chavving-a-laugh-at-equalities-libs-dems-top-team-toff/
- ↑ http://www.standard.co.uk/news/londoners-diary/londoners-diary-relationships-in-tite-street-are-getting-strained-10326345.html
- ↑ https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/10038528258
