Jeremy Corbyn easily wins reelection as head of UK Labour Party

LIVERPOOL, United Kingdom — Socialist Jeremy Corbyn was reelected as head of Britain’s opposition Labour Party on Saturday, emerging victorious from a power struggle with MPs that threatens to tear the historic movement apart.

The party said that Corbyn won almost 62 percent of the more than 500,000 votes cast by Labour members and supporters.

Ahead of the announcement of the result in Liverpool, northwest England, Corbyn issued a plea for unity after the bitter campaign and reached out to supporters of his rival, MP Owen Smith.

“Whatever the result, whatever the margin, we all have a duty to unite, cherish and build our movement,” said the 67-year-old, who went on to win a clear majority.

But Corbyn’s victory is still a bitter pill to swallow for the majority of Labour MPs who rebelled against him after June’s Brexit referendum, accusing him of not campaigning hard enough to keep Britain in the EU.

There are now fears that without a strong Labour opposition, Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservatives may be heading for a “hard Brexit” that would take Britain not only out of the European Union but also out of Europe’s single market.

Senior party figures are pleading with MPs opposed to Corbyn to come back and work with him after the expected win — but also say he needs to do better.

Labour’s home affairs spokesman Andy Burnham told BBC radio that, while the “war of attrition” must stop, Corbyn must also build more support among the public, not just Labour activists.

“No-one gets the right to take Labour down to a devastating [election] defeat,” he added.

Corbyn claims his anti-austerity message has energized people who had long given up on mainstream politics, yet critics say he is unelectable. They also accuse his supporters of intimidation and of trying to take over the party.

“This is not going anywhere anytime soon. It is entrenched warfare,” said Steven Fielding, an expert on Labour at the University of Nottingham.

“There will be no victor in the short term, apart from the Conservatives, of course, who are laughing all the way to the next election,” he added.

Known for his anti-war, anti-austerity campaigning and opposition to the party’s former centrist leader Tony Blair, Corbyn won a crushing leadership victory exactly 12 months ago.

While his position as leader is solid thanks to the backing of powerful trade unions and his vociferous grassroots supporters, many Jewish voters view him with skepticism due to his past comments on Israel and associations with vehemently anti-Israel figures.

The Labour leader has come under fire for referring to Iranian-backed Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends,” which Corbyn dismissed as a diplomatic term intended to engage with the groups. During a speech in 2009, as patron of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Corbyn invited members of the two terror groups to speak at the British Parliament.

A spate of suspensions of party members for alleged anti-Semitism since his election have done little to endear him to the traditionally Labour-leaning British Jewish community, nor has Corbyn’s handling of the crisis.

An internal inquiry in June found Labour was not overrun by anti-Semitism but reported an “occasionally toxic atmosphere.” But in remarks made during an event marking the release of the report, Corbyn seemed to draw a comparison between Israel and the Islamic State terror group, saying that, “our Jewish friends are no more responsible for the actions of Israel or the Netanyahu government than our Muslim friends are for those various self-styled Islamic states or organizations.”

‘Furthest from power since ’30s’

Corbyn was first elected last year with 59 percent of the vote from party members, and with strong backing from trade unions, but was immediately criticized by MPs who say his left-wing views are outdated.

The divisions widened in the following months and reached breaking point with the EU referendum, which triggered mass resignations from his shadow cabinet and a vote of no confidence in his leadership by 172 of the party’s 230 MPs.

But the threat against Corbyn faded into a whimper when lawmakers backed the relatively unknown Smith to challenge for the leadership.

Few commentators believed Smith could win, and the contest appears only to have entrenched divisions between Corbyn and Labour’s MPs.

Former Labour foreign secretary David Miliband, a centrist narrowly beaten to the party leadership by his brother Ed in 2010, wrote in the New Statesman magazine this week: “We have not been further from power since the 1930s.”

‘Unhappy family’

Corbyn has been in parliament since 1983 and strongly opposed the party’s centrist “New Labour” prime minister Tony Blair, who won three elections.

The bearded vegetarian, who had never held high office before becoming leader but set up a mass protest movement against the Iraq War, has a messianic appeal to supporters who have packed his rallies around the country.

Corbyn supporters were planning to unfurl a banner in support of his fight for “social justice” at Liverpool’s football club’s Anfield ground on Saturday before the team’s Premier League clash with Hull City.

But his message does not appear to have resonated with the wider electorate. Labour lags behind May’s Conservatives in the opinion polls, while his personal ratings are dire.

While some in Labour have suggested they could form a new center-left party, analysts say most will do everything to avoid this.

“It looks to me like a miserable, unhappy family trying to coexist,” said Tony Travers, a politics expert at the London School of Economics.

Raoul Wootliff contributed to this report