Jeremy Corbyn: Britain’s saviour or great white nope?
- Electoral support fades for UK opposition leader amid disillusionment over his failure to oppose Brexit
The former UK prime minister Theresa May ended her final parliamentary address last month with a rebuke, not to her fellow Conservatives that had made her life so difficult she had to resign, but to the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
“As a party leader who has accepted when her time has come, perhaps the time has come for him to do the same,” May said.
With a hung parliament bitterly divided over Brexit the prospect of a snap election in the autumn appears closer by the day. Critics say the leader of the UK opposition is missing in action, unelectable and whose insistence on clinging on to power is threatening the very existence of the Labour Party.
“British politics is constipated and the only positive laxative would be a new leader of the Labour Party,” said anti-Brexit radio presenter James O’Brien last week.
O’Brien, a popular figure especially with London’s liberal elite, made his comments after a by-election in the Welsh constituency of Brecon and Radnorshire saw the Conservative Party losing a former safe seat to the staunchly anti-Brexit Liberal Democrats.
The Labour candidate, beset by the unpopularity of its leader with voters, if not party members, scored just 5.28 per cent of the vote – nearly losing his deposit.