Britain’s Labour Party and Its Anti-American Friends

The political systems of Britain and the United States have borne witness to many surprises in recent months. With Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump achieving surprising success in their parties’ primaries ahead of the 2016 general election, it can be forgotten that Britain has already seen a similar upset: the election of Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed ideologue of the far-Left, as leader of the Labour party, one of Britain’s three major parties. In the aftermath of his election as leader, that party has seen an abrupt divergence from the internationalism of much of its long history.

A Betrayal of the Left

The Left in Britain used to be in favour of secularism and against the politicisation of religion. The lives of Thomas Paine, Bertrand Russell and many others attest to this proud history. They campaigned against and opposed the domination of any one religious group – and they did so even when it was dangerous, both to their careers and even their lives. (The burning down of Joseph Priestley’s laboratory was not an entirely isolated event; and the sentiments expressed were not those of a minority. As Samuel Taylor Coleridge wrote in his “Religious Musings”, ‘priests idolatrous / By dark lies maddening the blind multitude / Drove with vain hate’.)