UK's Labour Party flirts with its most socialist leader in 30 years

London

SYRIZA, Podemos, and now Labour? The UK's main opposition party is on track to elect its most socialist leader in 30 years as support continues to surge for anti-austerity, pro-nationalisation candidate Jeremy Corbyn.

Mr Corbyn, 66, has the most indications of support from Labour's constituency groups, backing from the UK's two biggest trade unions, Unite and Unison, and topped a YouGov plc opinion poll last week on the four leadership candidates.

Three UK bookmakers slashed Mr Corbyn's odds on Wednesday to make him favourite ahead of Andy Burnham.

The lawmaker for the North Islington district in London, who entered Parliament in 1983 and has never served as a minister, supports scrapping Britain's nuclear weapons, abolishing the monarchy and nationalising the railways. He campaigns for the re-unification of Ireland and is comfortable with a top rate of income tax of 70 per cent.

Mr Corbyn's socialist platform is the most radical advanced by a Labour leadership candidate since Michael Foot in 1980. Mr Foot won, and then presided over a disastrous election defeat for the party in 1983 on a manifesto described by one Labour lawmaker as "the longest suicide note in history".

"This is Labour shooting themselves in the foot," said Steve Fielding, director of the Centre for British Politics at Nottingham University. The Corbyn surge is the result of many Labour supporters believing the party was "too right-wing" in May's election campaign under Ed Miliband, its worst election result since 1987, he said.

"It seems plausible to them that they just need to have a very firm anti-austerity argument" to counter Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron's programme of spending cuts, Mr Fielding said. "They haven't quite come to terms with the fact that actually Labour was nowhere near ever winning that election or becoming the largest party."

Mr Corbyn's agenda includes promises of big infrastructure spending financed by quantitative easing, cracking down on corporate tax avoidance and a minimum wage of £10 (S$22) an hour. It's now £6.50. He says he wants to provide an alternative to the mainstream consensus on the need for budget-cutting.

Mr Corbyn's rise comes in a year when the anti-austerity movement Syriza came to power in Greece and spent six months resisting further belt-tightening measures to allow it to stay in the euro before finally giving in. Syriza's Spanish counterpart, Podemos, has been attracting growing support before elections later this year.

Labour's leadership battle was triggered by the resignation of Mr Miliband the day after leading the party to its second consecutive general-election defeat. Labour was last in power between 1997 and 2010, under the more pro-business "New Labour" platform of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

Three-time election winner Blair has warned Labour against Mr Corbyn's approach. He told a gathering of party supporters in London last week that the party "wins from the centre" and anyone whose heart is with Mr Corbyn needs to "get a transplant". The most Blairite candidate in the leadership election, Liz Kendall, is trailing in last place, according to polling and the bookmakers.

Mr Cameron said on Tuesday in Singapore it was "fun" to watch Labour "making a mess of things". Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne said in the Daily Telegraph newspaper Wednesday that Labour is currently "gripped by a bout of collective madness". Mr Corbyn plays into Tory hands, according to Mr Fielding. "A Labour Party that's completely out on a limb and divided among itself" would make it easier for the Conservatives to pass legislation in the House of Commons, he noted.

Yvette Cooper, a minister in Mr Brown's government and a candidate in the leadership race, told the Independent newspaper on Wednesday that electing Mr Corbyn would be "condemning our world to a Tory future". BLOOMBERG