Editor’s note: The opinions in this article are the author’s, as published by our content partner, and do not represent the views of MSN or Microsoft. The choice at the coming election is between the pinched English nationalism of Boris Johnson’s Conservatives and the far-left socialism of JeremyCorbyn’s Labour party. The Treasury’s calculations show even the most favourable outcome carries a heavy cost in lost growth, investment and jobs. To map a path back into No 10 the prime minister has sought to outflank Nigel Farage’s Brexit party on the nationalist far-right. So the Tory manifesto fixes December 31 2020 as the final date for completion of a trade deal with Brussels. This new deadline repeats the elementary mistake made by Mrs May when she rushed to open Article 50 negotiations. Mr Johnson will be left with the option of a bare-bones accord that excludes Britain’s service industries, or of crashing out without a deal. His ever repeated promise to “get Brexit done” is as infantilising as it is mendacious, but it taps into the frustration among those who backed Leave in the 2016referendum. Labour’s economic prospectus, with its promises of lavish spending increases on any public service you care to think of, punitive taxes on the rich and nationalisation of state utilities does strike a populist chord. After a decade of Tory austerity, who wouldn’t vote for the free, superfast broadband promised for every householdin the land? Before he became fully engaged with politics at home, Corbyn, aged around 19, spent two years in Jamaica, where he was a teacher, and then Chile, where he took part in the May Day march against the Chilean government. (Pictured) Corbyn (C) and other Labour Members of Parliament (MP) with Tamil refugees on board the government detention ship, the Earl William, based at Harwich on Aug. 6, 1987. Two years later, he helped organise his mentor Tony Benn’s (L) unsuccessful campaign for Labour Party’s deputy leadership. Corbyn entered Parliament from the safe Labour seat of Islington North following his win in the 1983 general elections. At the same time, he also started writing for the communist newspaper, Morning Star, which he has described as the “most precious and only voice wehave in the daily media.” A year after his becoming MP, Corbyn was arrested for protesting outside the South African embassy against apartheid. Corbyn was again in the eye of controversy in 1987 when he observed a minute’s silence as a mark of tribute for eight IRA members killed in an ambush by SAS in Gibraltar. At a meeting the same year, he had said that he felt “happy to commemorate all those who died fighting for an independent Ireland.” His views led to MI5, the U.K.’s domestic counter-intelligence agency, opena temporary file on him. Labour came to power in 1997 but Corbyn was never given any ministerial position for the 13 consecutive years it ruled the United Kingdom. In 1998, he was among the politicians who campaigned for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet’s arrest in a case involving the murder of a British stockbroker in Chile in 1975. The bid failed but the House of Lords later ruled Pinochet must stay in Britain to be extradited to Spain to face charges including genocide during and after the 1973 coup. In 2001, a reported attempt to force him out of the party was unsuccessful as he returned with an overwhelming victory in the general election. Despite going against the party line more times than could be counted, a sudden backing of some MPs before the close of nominations in 2015 saw Corbyn emerge as a candidate for the party’s leadership. He won the subsequent contest with ease, thereby becoming the Leader of Opposition in the House of Commons in September. Corbyn, however, successfully parried his opponents for a second time and won the Labour Party leadership election in September 2016 by a bigger margin than the previous year’s. Faced with accusations of anti-Semitism within the party in 2016, Corbyn suspended former London Mayor Ken Livingstone for saying that Adolf Hitler supported Zionism. Two years later, he praised Iran for its “tolerance and acceptance of other faiths, traditions and ethnic groupings” at the 25th anniversary of the Iranian Revolution. During several of his interviews and speeches, he has tried to draw a parallel between acts of terror and Britain’s military actions in other countries. Since 2012, the Labour leader is married to his third wife Laura Alvarez, a former banker who he met at a Latin American support group in 1999. But it also speaks to the hypocrisy of a politician who has allowed anti-Semitism to flourish among his far-left supporters and whose instincts in foreign policy are always to side with authoritarian regimes against the west. A self-styled champion of thepoor and oppressed, Mr Corbyn is also an apologist for Russia’s Vladimir Putin and an unabashed admirer of repressive regimes in Cuba and Venezuela. Unsurprisingly, the polls show Mr Johnson to be well ahead, helped also by the failure of the Liberal Democrats to mount an effective campaign from the pro-European political centre ground.
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