Corbyn's Triumph Another Ill Omen for Hillary

Hillary's grave has been dug.

Back at the beginning of May, after Ed Miliband led Labour to a historic defeat in Britain's parliamentary elections, I opined that it augured ill for corporate Democrats in the U.S. At the time, analysts in the mainstream media were trying to spin Cameron's big win as a cautionary tale for Labour moving to the left. Somehow these analysts (I'm thinking here of Steven Erlanger's "Appeal to Dwindling Core Proves Costly for Labour Party in Britain") interpreted Miliband's meekly mouthed promises to roll back some of the egregious aspects of Tory austerity, and Labour's subsequent collapse at the polls, as proof that a leftist attack on neoliberalism was a surefire loser. These analysts failed to account for the incredible showing of the Scottish National Party, a party far to the left of Labour.

Now, this past weekend, Labour has corrected course by shifting hard to the left. Longtime socialist, anti-war firebrand and Labour MP Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of the Labour Party. (See top of the post the informative interview with Tariq Ali from yesterday's Democracy Now! for a good intro to Corbyn.) He won thanks in part to a change in rules that broadened the base of who could vote for party leader. Young people overwhelming supported Corbyn and his message of equality, fraternity and an end to foreign wars; he won with 60 percent of the vote over a mishmash of Blairites.

So Labour is starting its journey back to relevance. Rocky will be the road because zombies occupy most positions of power in neoliberal Western society. (Erlanger pitifully reprises his tune from May by arguing that Corbyn's election means a big Tory win in 2020.)

But the canon has sounded and the blast has been heard across the pond. The U.S. and UK are cousins. When neoliberalism drove it piles into the soil 40 years ago it did so with Thatcherism and Reaganism. Markets are always right and unions are insidious special-interest groups and blacks are lazy scofflaws and military might must be exercised frequently (preferably against a powerless opponent). These are some of the tenets of Thatcherism/Reaganism. And I would say that they have largely lost their purchase on the general public.

Hillary as the Democratic banner-waver of the neoliberal consensus has said that her plan to win the White House is based on returning the Obama coalition to the polls. One crucial bloc of the Obama coalition is the youth vote. Youth went overwhelming with Corbyn in the Labour leadership vote. Youth is not going to go for Hillary in any significant number.

Richard Hell said that the truth is in the youth. The youth has rejected neoliberalism and its perpetual wars and inequality. Even if Hillary manages to cart her carcass across the finish line and defeat Sanders in the Democratic primary, Trump's traveling fascist road show will prove far too formidable for a conventional champion of neoliberalism like Rodham Clinton.

British Election Results Spell Doom for Democrats in the U.S.

I'm surprised it wasn't on the front page of the print edition of The New York Times this morning. But I suppose there was some concern that the exit polling predicting a big win for the Tories wasn't to be trusted entirely. Well, that is all changed now, as Steven Erlanger and Stephen Castle trumpet in "David Cameron and Conservatives Get Majority in British Election" from the top spot on the Gray Lady's homepage:

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron and his Conservatives won a resounding victory in the British general election, with nearly complete results on Friday showing that the party had secured an overall majority in Parliament. 

The vote was a stunning disappointment for the opposition Labour Party and its leader, Ed Miliband, who had shifted the party away from the more centrist strategy it pursued in the late 1990s and early 2000s under Tony Blair. Mr. Miliband stepped down on Friday, opening up a new debate over the party’s direction. 

The result defied pre-election opinion polls that suggested a tight race between the Conservatives and Labour. It returns Mr. Cameron to 10 Downing Street for a second term, with enough seats in the House of Commons to act on his agenda without having to rely on support from smaller parties. 

He went to Buckingham Palace on Friday to be invited by the queen to form a new government.

Labour was nearly wiped out in Scotland by the surging Scottish National Party and did more poorly than pre-election opinion polls had suggested it would in the rest of Britain. Several of Mr. Miliband’s top lieutenants lost their seats.

The predicted final tally is 331 seats for the Tories out of 650, a stunning gain of 24 seats from the last election in 2010; stunning because the Conservatives have governed so diffidently, implementing unpopular neoliberal austerity that is au courant on the German-dominated Continent.

The "dead-on-arrival" Liberal Democrats were replaced as Britain's third party by the surging Scottish National Party (SNP). SNP ended up with 56 out of 59 seats in Scotland.

But nothing is more noteworthy than the complete collapse of Labour under Ed Miliband. Labour is predicted to end up with 232 seats, a loss of 26 seats from 2010. What makes this collapse so noteworthy is that it clearly augurs ill for the Democrats going into the 2016 presidential elections.

Labour and the Democrats are largely the same, led to the weakened, listing place they are today by the corporate-friendly leadership of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

Miliband made all the right noises during the campaign. He attacked austerity, promised to raise wages and restore funding to National Health, much the same way that Hillary is mouthing the appropriate progressive words on income inequality and racial justice. But here is the thing: No one, only the most deeply-committed partisan, believes anything that Labour/Democrats say anymore. Everyone knows that once Labour/Dems take office and begin to govern the "people" they answer to are the corporations.

Is there any other way to interpret the election results in Britain?

Democrat bosses in New York City and Washington D.C. should take note and quickly implement a Plan B. SNP kicked ass because the party has no baggage and it stands for something that people want: independence from empire, broad equality and social spending.

Democrats should take a page from the GOP playbook post-2008 and do a "Tea Party makeover," except in this case the Dems need to swing sharply to the left. It is the only way to avoid disaster. Instead the Democrats are doubling down on the New Democrat corporate-friendly leadership of Hillary Clinton, a strategy that has placed the party at the edge of doom.

I bang my little toy drum on this page. The Democrats should beat a retreat from Clinton right now to avoid disaster -- unified government under a radically conservative Republican Party. That no change will be made, no Plan B implemented to avoid this onrushing calamity is amazing to me. Yet it is a sign of the times.

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Look for Hippies vs. Punks tomorrow morning -- Black Flag's My War.