Jeremy Corbyn (front row 2R) acknowledges the applause as he sits alongside Labour Party leadership candidates (LtoR) Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall, after being announced as the new leader of Britain's opposition Labour party, in London on September 12, 2015. Radical anti-austerity candidate Jeremy Corbyn has been elected the new head of Britain's main opposition Labour Party with 59.5 percent of the vote, the party announced at a special conference. AFP PHOTO / BEN STANSALL (Photo credit should read BEN STANSALL/AFP/Getty Images)

Jez he did! Jeremy Corbyn wins Labour leadership by a mile!

Iain Martin

12 September 2015

Oh my goodness. Labour has actually done what was unthinkable just a few months ago. Jeremy Corbyn is the party’s new leader.

He won with a stunning 59% of the vote, that’s 251,417 votes. Andy Burnham was second on 19% with 80,462. Yvette Cooper third with 71,928, or 17% of vote. And the Blairite Liz Kendall finished last on 18,857, just 4.5%. Tom Watson, the left-wing bruiser, won the deputy leadership.

Before the announcement, the audience and the watching media had to sit through various speeches from Labour functionaries. No party does sentimental self-regard quite like the UK Labour party.

But for all the talk of the party now pulling together, Labour is in a disastrous position. It has been infiltrated by the hard left and people living in a left-wing echo chamber. It is led by a 1980s-style socialist and, just as happened then, the party is about to run smack bang into the voters of England, in the kind of marginal seats that voted Tory in May. They won’t be marginal seats next time.