MK comment on Corbyn victory

Jeremy Corbyn’s overwhelming victory in the Labour leadership contest has been widely welcomed by progressive political parties across the United Kingdom.

The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon has congratulated Jeremy Corbyn on his victory and offered to “work constructively with him in a progressive alliance against Tory austerity,” calling on him to “give an early commitment that Labour MPs will join the SNP in voting against the £100 billion renewal of Trident.”

Leanne Wood of Plaid Cymru has also congratulated the new Labour leader on his success, adding “we hope that he will now deliver the votes of his MPs to join Plaid Cymru MPs in opposing those Tory policies that are causing great harm to people in Wales and beyond.”

On a similar theme, Natalie Bennett of the Greens has remarked that the result shows “how many people support an alternative to austerity economics, to the head-in-the-sand approach to our environmental crisis and to tired, business-as-usual politics.”

As the leader of MK, I share these views and I sincerely hope that Jeremy Corbyn’s election really does reinvigorate progressive politics across the UK.

But there has also been concern about the nature of the Labour Party that Mr Corbyn has inherited.

Nicola Sturgeon has described Labour as a “deeply, and very bitterly, divided party,” adding that “if Labour cannot quickly demonstrate that they have a credible chance of winning the next UK General Election, many more people in Scotland are likely to conclude that independence is the only alternative to continued Tory government.”

Leanne Wood has meanwhile stated that “his election cannot alter Labour's dismal record in government in Wales” which she described as “one of failure and managed decline.”

From my perspective, I have always been extremely disappointed by Labour’s unwillingness to support greater powers for Cornwall through a Cornish Assembly. Labour’s non-response to the 50,000 individually-signed declarations calling for our own Assembly – delivered to Tony Blair in 2001 – was particularly galling for me.

This opposition to Cornish devolution has stretched from the local party in Cornwall to the party bosses in Westminster.

I am reassured though that Jeremy Corbyn is one of only a handful of Labour MPs who have not been afraid to support calls for a Cornish Assembly. He was, for example, one of only three Labour MPs who backed an EDM (Early Day Motion) in 2011 marking the 10th anniversary of 50,000 declarations demanding a Cornish Assembly and calling for proper democratic devolution to Cornwall.