Jeremy Corbyn, Labour, and the Challenge for British Politics - The New Yorker: "This conundrum may be all the more acute for Corbyn, because few of his M.P.s want him as their commander-in-chief. They did not choose him. He was chosen under a new set of Labour Party rules that, like many things devised in the interests of fairness, have concluded in a splendid fiasco. You might think that, because M.P.s are elected by the populace, they could—or logically should—be trusted to appoint their own overlord. Not so. There was a time when the trades unions, fettered by history and loyalty to Labour, wielded great influence in the matter of its leader, but that age has faded. Instead, with a bracing simplicity, every paid-up member of the party now has a vote. The payment is three pounds (about four dollars and sixty cents). For that trifling sum, you get to sway the direction of Labour’s future, and, if enough of you sign up—many minds with but a single thought—the outcome will be anything but a trifle. That is what transpired in 2015: the Corbynistas ran amok. They swarmed to their man. Corbynmania was born."
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