UK Elections, Unpredictabilities and Jeremy Corbyn.

Democratic elections today are full of surprises and unpredictabilities. Remember how most major polls predicted a 99% win for Hillary Clinton last November? And yet she lost to the Donald? In the 2015 UK elections, many pollsters predicted a hung parliament, but boy, they were wrong. Instead David Cameron's Conservative Party won a majority.

This year too the pollsters have predicted a safe majority win for Theresa May and the Tories. Some even reported the possibility of Labour's worst defeat since WWII! It was only on voting day, through Exit Poll results that the pollsters and the media finally realised about the extent of the shift in the ground - possible hung parliament; which many attributed it to the "surprising" high turnout among the young voters, who are more inclined to vote Labour.

2 years ago when Jeremy Corbyn was elected as the Leader of the Labour Party, nobody gave him a chance. He did not even have the support from his fellow Labour MPs. The Blairites from within the party dismissed as "unelectable" because of his strong left wing position on issues. But today he has surprised and proved his critics wrong by leading Labour to its best ever performance since 2000 and could well end up replacing Theresa May as the next Prime Minister by forming a new government with the SNP and/or the Liberal Democrats.

Now why am I excited about Jeremy Corbyn? My position on politics have always been guided by issues and party platforms, and not so much on ideology. I am a pragmatic realist at heart. I believe that ideology is only as good as the purpose it serves.

In the case of the UK and Corbyn, what we are witnessing is that, for the first time in British modern history, a truly anti-war and pro-Palestine leader could potentially be elected as Prime Minister.
Corbyn defied all odds. When calls were made to "moderate" his so-called "hard left" views and positions, claiming that it makes him "unelectable", he stood firm to his ground.

20 years ago, Tony Blair was widely credited for transforming the Labour Party by moving the party's platform to the center. And today, 2017 would be the year where Jeremy Corbyn moved the center to Labour.

---
Note: At the time of posting, both the Conservative and Labour are attempting to form a government in alliance with other smaller parties.

Comments