scholarly journals What do you call it when Jeremy Corbyn walks into a Seder? Jewishness, Gustav Landauer (1870–1919) and ethical subject-formation

Thesis Eleven ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 072551362098563
Author(s):  
Clive Gabay
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Subject Formation ◽  
Ethical Subject ◽  
German Jewish ◽  
Leftist Group ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

Then UK Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s attendance at a Passover Seder organised by the radical leftist group, Jewdas, in April 2018, led to a brief but vitriolic controversy involving Anglo-Jewish umbrella organisations concerning who qualifies to speak as a Jew. This article uses this controversy to engage with Judith Butler’s attempt to address this question, suggesting that in decentring Zionist claims to Jewish subjectivity she fails to take account of how different Jewish subjectivities are formed, and thus ends up proposing a ‘good Jew/bad Jew’ binary that dissolves Jewishness into universal humanism. Drawing on the work of the German-Jewish mystical anarchist Gustav Landauer (1870–1919), the article proposes a different way of understanding subjectivity that retains ontological inherency as a plausible precondition for ethical solidarity. As such, the article’s argument has implications not merely for a reworked understanding of Jewish subjectivity but for the politics of subject formation more broadly.

New UK Labour leadership will concern the government

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Lower Order ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
England And Wales ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Opposition Party ◽  
The Government ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

Subject A profile of Keir Starmer. Significance On April 4 Keir Starmer was elected Labour Party leader with 56.2% of the vote, replacing hard-leftist Jeremy Corbyn. Starmer’s background as a former director of public prosecutions who hails from Labour's more moderate wing gives him the gravitas and experience necessary to turn Labour into a more serious opposition party. Impacts The scale of Starmer’s victory has given him a mandate to reform the party. The broad ideological spectrum of Starmer’s shadow cabinet reflects his intentions to unite the party. Starmer will primarily focus on regaining seats in England and Wales; those lost in Scotland over the last decade are a lower-order concern.

scholarly journals Making sense of the rise and fall of Jeremy Corbyn: Towards an ambiguity-centred perspective on authentic leadership

Leadership ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 174271502096719
Author(s):  
Andrea Whittle
Keyword(s):  
Authentic Leadership ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Political Leader ◽  
Media Discourse ◽  
The Third ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Media ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

When Jeremy Corbyn was first elected as leader of the Labour party in 2015, he was framed in the media as a new type of authentic political leader. Corbyn seemed to represent everything that a typical politician was not: honest, straight talking, principled and someone who always stayed true to his beliefs. In the aftermath of the December 2019 general election and the worst defeat for the Labour party since 1935, this article takes stock of how authenticity featured in the media discourse during Corbyn’s tenure as a party leader. Three competing discourses are identified. The first discourse categorised Corbyn as authentic and framed his authenticity as a leadership strength. The second discourse framed Corbyn as inauthentic. The third discourse framed Corbyn’s authenticity as a leadership problem. The study reveals a deeply ambivalent and contradictory set of discourses of authenticity that circulated in the media and highlights the ideological function performed by these competing discourses, which juxtapose ideas and ideals of personal authenticity against ideas and ideals about what constitutes effective political leadership. The article concludes by advancing an ambiguity-centred approach (Alvesson M and Spicer A (eds) (2010) Metaphors We Lead By: Understanding Leadership in the Real World. London: Routledge) to understanding authentic leadership, where authenticity is understood as a set of ambiguous and competing discursive attributions made within a contested social and political context.

UK Labour Party may have little influence on Brexit

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Union Membership ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
Customs Union ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Conservative Government ◽  
Strong Performance ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn ◽  
Clear Support

Significance Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been ambiguous on this issue, and the period since Labour’s unexpectedly strong performance in the general election on June 8 has seen the party publicly divided over its stand on the Brexit negotiations. Impacts Labour’s lack of clear support for a ‘soft’ Brexit may act to preclude single market and customs union membership as long-term options. Labour's ambiguous stand on Brexit puts the Conservative government under less pressure to clarify its own Brexit strategy. Adopting a clearer stand on Brexit would probably cost Labour votes owing to deep divisions on the issue within its electorate.

scholarly journals Oh Jeremy Corbyn! Why did Labour Party membership soar after the 2015 general election?

2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 80-98 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Whiteley ◽  
Monica Poletti ◽  
Paul Webb ◽  
Tim Bale
Keyword(s):  
Relative Deprivation ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
General Election ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Left Behind ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Project Data ◽  
First Time ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

This article investigates the remarkable surge in individual membership of the Labour Party after the general election of May 2015, particularly after Jeremy Corbyn was officially nominated as a candidate for the leadership in June of that year. Using both British Election Study and Party Members Project data, we explain the surge by focussing on the attitudinal, ideological and demographic characteristics of the members themselves. Findings suggest that, along with support for the leader and yearning for a new style of politics, feelings of relative deprivation played a significant part: many ‘left-behind’ voters (some well-educated, some less so) joined Labour for the first time when a candidate with a clearly radical profile appeared on the leadership ballot. Anti-capitalist and left-wing values mattered too, particularly for those former members who decided to return to the party.

Revolt on the left

2018 ◽  
pp. 34-57 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Quinn
Keyword(s):  
Labour Party ◽  
Vote Share ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

This chapter offers an account of the Labour Party between the 2015 and 2017 general elections. It explains why Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader and how the party moved further to the left. It examines the very different responses to Corbyn’s leadership from within the party, and why he was both challenged for the party leadership by his MPs and able to defend his position with enormous support from the mass membership. It finishes by examining how, after languishing in the polls, Labour defied expectations on polling day by dramatically increasing its vote share.

Back to the past? Labour’s return to opposition, 2010 to the present

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Jobson
Keyword(s):  
New Labour ◽  
General Election ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Past ◽  
Party Members ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

This chapter examines Labour’s return to opposition after the 2010 General Election. It argues that, within the party, the period since 2010 has witnessed a nostalgic resurgence. When compared to the New Labour era, elite discourses have become less hostile to nostalgia. To varying degrees, all of the candidates in the 2010 leadership contest articulated memories associated with the party’s nostalgia-identity. Under Ed Miliband’s leadership, intraparty groups and movements that exhibited a sentimental attachment to the past grew in strength. Following Labour’s 2015 election defeat, Jeremy Corbyn obtained and consolidated his status as party leader by making nostalgic appeals to the past that resonated with party members. Within Labour, Corbyn’s political opponents have largely been forced onto his nostalgic terrain. Therefore, this chapter concludes by suggesting that, far from representing a ‘new kind of politics’, Corbynism represents an acute political manifestation of Labour’s historically orientated identity.

scholarly journals Journalistic transgressions in the representation of Jeremy Corbyn: From watchdog to attackdog

Journalism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Cammaerts ◽  
Brooks DeCillia ◽  
João Carlos Magalhães
Keyword(s):  
Content Analysis ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Press Coverage ◽  
The Press ◽  
The Media ◽  
British Press ◽  
Jeremy Corbyn

This research critically assesses the press coverage of Jeremy Corbyn during his leadership bid and subsequent first months as the leader of the United Kingdom’s Labour Party. A content analysis ( n = 812) found that the British press offered a distorted and overly antagonistic view of the long-serving MP. Corbyn is often denied a voice and news organisations tended to prize anti-Corbyn sources over favourable ones. Much of the coverage is decidedly scornful and ridicules the leader of the opposition. This analysis also tests a set of normative conceptions of the media in a democracy. In view of this, our research contends that the British press acted more as an attackdog than a watchdog when it comes to the reporting of Corbyn. We conclude that the transgression from traditional monitorial practices to snarling attacks is unhealthy for democracy, and it furthermore raises serious ethical questions for UK journalism and its role in society.

scholarly journals Political Performance and Leadership Persona: The UK Labour Party Conference of 2012

2013 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 481-505 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Gaffney ◽  
Amarjit Lahel
Keyword(s):  
Political Process ◽  
Labour Party ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
Party Leader ◽  
The Political ◽  
Leadership Performance ◽  
Political Performance ◽  
Ed Miliband ◽  
The Uk

This article is a contribution to an emerging scholarship on the role of rhetoric, persona and celebrity, and the effects of performance on the political process. We analyse party leader Ed Miliband at the UK Labour Party Conference in Manchester in 2012. Our analysis identifies how, through performance of ‘himself’ and the beginnings of the deployment of an alternative party narrative centred on ‘One Nation’, Ed Miliband began to revise his ‘received persona’. By using a range of rhetorical and other techniques, Miliband began to adapt the Labour narrative to the ‘personalized political’. The article sets out the theoretical framework for the analysis and returns to the implications for the theory of leadership performance in its conclusion.

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