Rank outsider Jeremy Corbyn sweeps into UK’s Labour Party hot seat

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected the new leader of Britain’s Labour Party in one of the biggest political shocks of recent times. The veteran left-wing MP stormed to victory in the first round, taking 59.5% of the more than 400,000 votes cast. He left his closest rival, Andy Burnham, trailing on 19%, with Yvette Cooper winning 17% and Liz Kendall 4.5%. As Mr Corbyn’s landslide win was announced, his supporters cheered loudly and chanted: “Jez we did!” Tom ‘Two Dinners’ Watson was elected deputy leader in the third round of the alternative vote electoral system. But Corbyn’s win saw three members of the shadow cabinet quit immediately.

They are fed up with the inequality, the injustice, the unnecessary poverty. All those issues have brought people in in a spirit of hope and optimism.

New Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn

“My first act as leader of the party will be to go to the demonstration this afternoon to show support for the way refugees should be treated and must be treated in this country,” Mr Corbyn said. As the result was read out, he hugged his fellow leadership candidates and praised them in his victory speech. He said the party is going to become more “inclusive, more involved, more democratic” and will “shape the future of everyone in this country”. Mr Corbyn, who calls himself a democratic socialist but who critics brand as a radical lefty who will destroy the party, said he will be attending a Refugees Welcome Here rally in London once the leadership conference was finished.

We don’t have to be unequal, it doesn’t have to be unfair, poverty isn’t inevitable, things can and they will change.

Mr Corbyn

Europe Corbyn