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Jeremy Corbyn Lost U.K. Election, but Is Still Its Biggest Winner - The New York Times

posted onJune 11, 2017
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Article snippet: LONDON — It was a scathing put-down. “He can lead a protest, I’m leading the country,” Prime Minister Theresa May of Britain said about the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn. Over the past seven weeks, Mr. Corbyn led the protest of his life. As Mrs. May faltered, stumbling her way toward an election she herself had called, the veteran left winger and serial campaigner turned his party into a movement. Even in his own party, many derided Mr. Corbyn as a hopeless and hapless leader, an unreformed Marxist who would sink the Labour Party into oblivion, and wanted him to lose the election — badly. Mr. Corbyn did lose the election. But he won more than anyone else. He deprived the prime minister who had treated him with such dismissiveness of both her Parliamentary majority and her authority. Far from obliterating Labour, he re-energized it, shifting its politics far to the left. By Friday afternoon, some of his critics were eating their words. “He’s had a brilliant campaign,” said Chuka Umunna, a senior member of the Labour Party who was among those openly disgruntled with Mr. Corbyn’s leadership last year. “Jeremy has fought this campaign with enthusiasm, energy, verve, has clearly loved being surrounded in the mix with people. That’s what politics is all about.” And a striking contrast to Mrs. May, who was roundly criticized as wooden, robotic and manifestly uncomfortable when meeting voters. When the election campaign started last month, few took... Link to the full article to read more

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