The result left critics of Corbyn and people on the right of the party searching for a way forward after the attempted summer coup against the leader backfired spectacularly.
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Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale has said she believes a United Kingdom party led by Jeremy Corbyn can win a general election. If you look at policy issues within our party there’s very little difference between us all on the vast bulk of policy.
“We have been. involving people in politics that matters”, Corbyn told his supporters at a final rally.
But his leadership never sat comfortably with more moderate members of Labour, including many of its sitting MPs.
Re-elected Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has urged his party to “wipe the slate clean” after a bitter campaign marred by claims of abuse, harassment and even death threats. But she has said there will be no early election.
Corbyn (67) attracts a devoted following, but his election to leader past year on a wave of enthusiasm for change also unleashed a backlash against centrist lawmakers where personal attacks, allegations of anti-Semitism and abuse left little room for debate over policy.
Dugdale spoke as samples from a leadership exit poll appeared to show that Scottish Labour members had, in common with her, given their support to rival candidate Owen Smith.
But John McTernan, a former senior adviser to Blair, said he would not stop opposing Corbyn.
Caerphilly Labour MP Wayne David said: “In many ways this has been a hard summer”.
Corbyn got 61.8 percent of the vote to opponent Owen Smith’s 38.2.
The party has nearly tripled its membership to more than 500,000, making it the largest in Western Europe, Corbyn said.
Corbyn told the conference his anti-austerity policies had attracted thousands to Labour, helping to nearly treble its membership to make it western Europe’s largest, and he was ready to lead a more democratic party to election victory in 2020.
“While Labour row amongst themselves, this Conservative government will continue to deliver a country that works for everyone, not just the privileged few”.
Corbyn called on MPs to join a campaign day next weekend against the Tories’ plans to reintroduce grammar schools, to show that the entire party can now unite.
His followers – dubbed Corbynistas – see Labour as a mass movement for social justice, similar to Spain’s Podemos, rather than simply a machine for winning elections.
Tens of thousands more new members have flocked to Labour since Corbyn was elected, making it Britain’s largest party. They argue that his policies are too narrowly left-wing to win over undecided voters.
And the contest came about after more than 170 MPs supported a motion of no confidence in their leader – that confidence vote came after dozens quit his shadow cabinet and other frontbench roles. The contest was nasty, fraught with online name-calling and allegations that the leadership of the strongly pro-Palestinian Corbyn has fostered anti-Semitic abuse in the party.
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“This country needs a sensible progressive party, and it will get one back”, he said.
