Jeremy Corbyn is Surging by using Bernie Sanders Playbook
Excerpt:
This rhetoric was similar to that used by Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator from Vermont who ran an insurgent campaign for President, and the echoes were quite deliberate. Like Sanders, Corbyn is an outsider tilting at the economic and political élites. He is very popular among the young; he is using social media to outflank the mainstream press. And his agenda is explicitly redistributionist: it features sizable tax hikes on rich households and corporations to finance higher spending on public services, such as health care, education, and social care for the elderly. “For the Many, Not the Few” has been Labour’s slogan since Corbyn launched the Party’s campaign, on May 9th.
Since he took over as Labour’s leader, in September, 2015, much of the British media has excoriated him as too extreme to be electable. Many Labour M.P.s have complained about his lack of leadership skills: last year, they passed a vote of no-confidence in him. But Corbyn, who is popular at the grass roots of the Party, soldiered on. Since the campaign began, he has travelled across the country, sticking doggedly to his message and ignoring the sleights hurled at him. (The Sun has called him a “wallie.” The Daily Telegraph compared him to Hugo Chávez.)
His enemies underestimated him. Although nobody would mistake him for a great orator, he has the capability to stay calm and speak in plain English. He’s offering a clear alternative to Conservative policies, and the spending proposals he is putting forward have the merits of being backed up by some detailed analyses, something the government can’t claim about its manifesto.
“If you put the corporation tax up, you are then in a position to deal with the crisis in social care, the crisis in the National Health Service, and properly fund our schools,” Corbyn said in response to Rudd’s gibes about Labour’s spending plans. Addressing May’s suggestion that Britain was at peace with itself under the Conservatives, Corbyn said, “I would just say: Have you been to a food bank? Have you seen people sleeping in our stations? Have you seen the levels of poverty that exist because of your government’s conscious decisions on benefits?”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/john-cassidy/jeremy-corbyn-is-surging-by-using-bernie-sanderss-playbook
