Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn

The Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn began when Jeremy Corbyn was elected as Leader of the UK Labour Party in September 2015, the election having been triggered by the resignation of Ed Miliband in the wake of Labour's defeat at the 2015 general election. At the same time, Corbyn became the Leader of the Opposition. Corbyn faced a second leadership election in 2016, when he was challenged by Owen Smith, but was re-elected in September.

Having felt disillusioned with a lack of a left-wing voice in the leadership contest, Corbyn decided to stand on an anti-austerity ticket, but was viewed by commentators as an outsider because of his left-wing views. Of the four candidates who stood (the others were: Andy Burnham, Liz Kendall and Yvette Cooper) Corbyn received the lowest number of nominations from Labour parliamentarians, many of whom said they had only given him their backing to widen the political debate. However, Corbyn soon became the frontrunner, his chances aided by a change in party membership rules that allowed new members a vote for the new leader, and on 12 September he was elected with a landslide 59%. Pledging to end the theatrical nature of Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs), Corbyn invited members of the public to submit questions for his first PMQs as opposition leader. Appointments in his first Shadow Cabinet included Burnham (Shadow Home Secretary), John McDonnell (Shadow Chancellor), Hilary Benn (Shadow Foreign Secretary) and Angela Eagle (Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills). Corbyn also promoted several female backbenchers, forming a Shadow Cabinet that for the first time had a greater number of women than men.

...
Wikipedia