The Near-Term Impacts of Corbyn's win
So in the end, the soft-left did not get cold feet, Corbyn's supporters stayed the course, and from quick gaze at my Facebook news-feed, the great mass of Labour's traditional activists have just seen the world end. Or my friends list greatly over-samples the 50.4% of the Labour party membership which voted against Corbyn on the first ballot.
Other than the need to find a new Shadow Cabinet on the part of Jeremy Corbyn, predictions of the longterm realignment of British politics are almost certainly premature. We do not know if Corbyn will be leader in 2020, if he will be pushed, or if he will jump himself. Who knows, he might even be run over by a bus? So it makes much more sense to focus on the short-term implications we can speculate about. In the medium term, Corbyn's election is likely to greatly reduce Labour's likelyhood of winning the 2016 London Mayoral race, and will act as another in a long series of developments which seem to have been paving George Osborne's path to succeed David Cameron as leader of the Conservative party. It may also have an impact on the refugee issue, though not in the way Corbyn's supporters will hope.
Refugees - One of the most important developments today was not what Corbyn did when his victory was announced. By this point that was the most likely outcome, and while his speech probably didn't win over doubters, or rhetoric specialists for that matter, it also was not likely to have been widely watched. What matters more is what Corbyn did after his speech, namely he walked over with many of his supporters to the #Refugeeswelcome march to Downing street.
The Refugee issue has played havoc with British politics. It has resulted in the public side-lining of Home Secretary Theresa May, who evidently judged that the "Refugee Crisis" would develop in the form of a battle to protect Britain from a horde of dangerous foreigners she would be called upon to repel. It has allowed the government to quietly shove aside other aspects of the immigration issue ranging from the net migration target to the Home Office's most recent proposals on student visas which appear to have vanished into ether.
What it has not done is fundamentally change the playing field of British politics. Despite the media en masse shifting themselves from anti-refugee panic to a witch-hunt for those lacking in compassion, the British public remains skeptical about mass immigration, and the background of many of these refugees, probably does not help matters. While not appropriate in private company, many, including several Tory MPs, likely would prefer to adopt Slovakia's approach of prioritizing Christian and maybe Kurdish refugees. In any event polls have shown that well over half the public think Cameron's offer of 10,000+ spots is too generous.
Enter Corbyn. Corbyn's contribution is two-fold. First he has forced the Labour party to re-enter the immigration debate, something the centrist in the party have sought to avoid since Gordon Brown called a voter concerned over immigration a racist in 2010. There is an enormous split between Labour's urban base, made up of immigrants and middle-class yuppies, both of whom see immigration not as a policy issue, but as a moral one, and are apt to quote the Guardian's stock argument that immigration is a net contributor to the economy(It is but that does not mean all immigrants are net contributors, that you cannot vet them based on potential contribution). On the other is a working-class base that not only is suspicious of immigration, but hostile to the perception that the party elite is spending all of its time caring about foreigners.
Corbyn's actions represent a full-embrace of the "moral" argument, and that makes him a tempting target. Cameron and the Tories do not need to play to xenophobia at all. The arrival of migrants is perfectly natural. Any Eritrean who heard that Britain was accepting people, putting them up in flats, and educating their children would have to be nuts not to want to pack up and leave. But it does not then follow that the UK is obliged to take everyone, or even can. Corbyn will be challenged in Parliament to give a number if he is opposed to Cameron's plan. 100,000, 250,000, one million? How many does he propose to take? Such a challenge will be nearly impossible to meet without either burning his supporters and own argument, or embracing a policy toxic to the electorate at large.
Cameron and Osborne have every reason to pursue this line of attack as the longer the focus is on refugees, the more it is off immigration generally. The more the focus is on Germany's blatant abuse of Schengen and freedom of movement in terms of admitting refugees, the less attention will be paid to the issue of EU migration. The more the focus is on refugees, the less anyone will pay attention to more affluent professional economic migrants. And the less attention anyone is paying to any of that means the weaker Theresa May is.
London Mayor - At the same time Labour supporters selected Corbyn as leader, they also selected Sadiq Khan to run for mayor of London next year. The Tories hold the office, though incumbent Boris Johnson, a political star in his own right, only narrowly won in 2012. With Boris leaving, and the Tories in government Labour should have had a good shot but several things complicate matters. While not a fire-breather, Khan was the left-wing choice, and he was also one of the 36 MPs who nominated Corbyn. Anyone hoping to oust Corbyn needs Labour to perform badly in 2016, and the highest profile race is London. Add a candidate on the Tory side who is designed to appeal to disaffected Labour voters in the form of Zac Goldsmith, and there is a real potential for it to turn into a referendum on Corbyn's leadership.
It also has the potential to turn into a referendum on labour issues generally. London has been wracked by Tube strikes in recent months as workers protest efforts to introduce a 24hr tube service on weekends. That was scheduled to start this weekend, but has now been delayed into next year. That means it will be an issue in the Mayor's race. With voters likely to be poorly inclined towards unions generally, a left-wing Labour candidate running under Corbyn may have a big hill to climb.
Tory Leadership - Corbyn's victory has continued a trend of good luck for George Osborne that began with the general election which vindicated Cameron's direction in the eyes of the Tory party. By seeing off UKIP, the election also damaged the leadership hopes of Theresa May, whose argument required the major threat to the Conservative party to come from the right. Now Corbyn's victory has opened additional opportunities in the center, making it self-evident to all but the most ideological right-wingers that staying the course is the best option. In the process this has also weekend the prospects of London Mayor Boris Johnson who was always a gamblers choice. In this case a party that believes it has been handed the 2020 election on a platter has no reason to take chances.
Nonetheless, the last few months show how dangerous a leadership race can be, and therefore Cameron has every reason to avoid one if at all possible. That means using his own power to arrange Osborne's succession. Assuming that the Tories win the London Mayor's race, Cameron could easily appoint the now-free Boris Johnson to the Home Office, and bump May to the Foriegn Office or Defense, nominally important positions that are low profile in an age of presidential PMs. That would keep Boris bogged down with immigration, weaken May, and with the addition of a number of Cameron proteges as junior Ministers, pave the way for Osborne's succession.
http://www.therestlessrealist.com/2015/09/the-near-term-impacts-of-corbyns-win.html
