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Article snippet: BIRMINGHAM, England — Birmingham Northfield, a modest residential area on the southwest border of England’s second-largest city, has backed the Labour candidate for Parliament the last 25 years. But in conversations along its main shopping street, a mixture of discount stores like Pound Store Plus and a Women’s Aid shop, it is not hard to detect the guilty temptation of voting Conservative as the June 8 election approaches — and the main problem bedeviling Labour. “I’ve always been Labour, but people have lost trust in the current leader, Jeremy Corbyn, and I don’t know if he’s got the personality and strength to be a leader,” Dipak Desai, a teacher, said, echoing the sentiments of many others. Districts like Northfield will help define not just the outcome of this strange British election, but the future of the Labour Party and its hard-left direction under Mr. Corbyn. At the start of this snap election campaign, there were widespread predictions of a Conservative landslide behind Prime Minister Theresa May, and a correspondingly historic defeat for a Labour Party already split by deep, ideological divisions. But Mrs. May has run a rough, uncertain campaign, while Mr. Corbyn, beginning with low expectations, has had a good one. Although some Labour moderates privately hoped that a cataclysmic defeat would sweep him away, now it looks as if the party will do well enough to maintain its uneasy status quo, and Mr. Corbyn and his proto-Marxist program will survive. ... Link to the full article to read more