Socialist Jeremy Corbyn Elected UK Opposition Labour Leader

Veteran left-wing MP Jeremy Corbyn has been elected leader of Britain's opposition Labour party. Corbyn won 59.5 percent of the ballots cast, or 251,417 votes, in the leadership, winning in the first round. When the results were announced he was cheered and hugged, even by some of his rivals. "Things can and they will change," Corbyn, 66, said in a victory speech which began with criticism of the British media for intrusive reporting and ended with a vow to achieve justice for the poor and downtrodden.
"I say thank you in advance to us all working together to achieve great victories, not just electorally for Labour, but emotionally for the whole of our society to show we don't have to be unequal, it doesn't have to be unfair, poverty isn't inevitable," he said. Political Analysts say Corbyn's emergence may make a British EU exit more likely and which one former Labour prime minister has warned could leave their party unelectable. A vegetarian who initially did not expect to win the contest, Corbyn has struck a chord with many Labour supporters by repudiating the pro-business consensus of former leader Tony Blair. Instead he has offered wealth taxes, nuclear disarmament and ambiguity about EU membership. "The Tories have used the economic crisis of 2008 to impose terrible burden on the poorest people in this country," Corbyn, dressed in a dark jacked and unbuttoned blue shirt, told supporters. "I am fed up with the social cleansing of London by this Tory government," he said of Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservatives. Corbyn defeated two former Labour ministers, Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham, and Liz Kendall, regarded as the heir to Blair. A left winger and parliamentary veteran with a long history of voting against his own party, Corbyn triumphed on a message of promising to increase government investment though money-printing and renationalising vast swathes of the economy.