Jeremy Corbyn versus the Third Way

A development which no one expected now appears inevitable. Barring either otherwordly intervention or old-fashioned political dirty tricks, Jeremy Corbyn, long on the left wing of the British Labour Party, is slated to become that party's new leader.

And the rabidly pro-capitalist heirs of long-gone "New Labour" leader Tony Blair, as well as the traditional right wing of the Labour Party, are absolutely apoplectic.

I wrote an article for Jacobin which puts Corbyn's campaign within the context of recent UK Labour Party history — and connects Blair's "New Labour" with its forerunners in the New Zealand Labour government of the 1980s and the Australian Labor governments of the 1980s and 1990s. These governments have been little discussed in Anglophone left-wing publications outside of Australasia, but they should be.

New Politics editorial board member Bhaskar Sunkara's interview with Leo Panitch, co-editor of the Socialist Register, on the Corbyn phenomenon, also shouldn't be missed.