The Rise and Fall of Corbynism

Abstract

In an era when the traditional centre-left parties have constantly lost ground to rising right-wing populist movements, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party was increasingly portrayed as a left-wing alternative to both pro-austerity incumbent parties that rule out redistributive policies and right-wing populism fuelled by the grievances of the masses targeting the traditional political elites. Corbyn managed to mobilize a vast section of the society by becoming Europe’s biggest left-wing party in terms of membership and increased its votes in the 2017 election, especially by gaining youth support. Nevertheless, the 2019 election constituted an immense fall. Regarding his political discourse both during the electoral campaigns and the serious challenges he faced, Corbyn could be identified as a left-wing populist. To be more specific, Corbyn is a democratic socialist who usually resorted to left-wing populist means within a social democratic party, and failed in his efforts to transform both the British mainstream politics and the Labour in the end.