http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/05/world/europe/jeremy-corbyn-labour-party-britain.html 2016-09-05 09:53:10 Labour Party Is Poised to Back Jeremy Corbyn Again, Even if Britain Isn’t The party is expected to re-elect Mr. Corbyn this month despite opposition from its legislators and polls suggesting it will lose badly to the governing Conservatives. === LONDON — A recent semi-scandal over seats on a train illuminates the Virgin Trains, which operates the service, then released closed-circuit television images showing numerous vacant seats bypassed by Mr. Corbyn, who was later filmed in a seat for most of the journey. That many of Yet the party’s membership is soaring. Under Mr. Corbyn, some 300,000 people have joined Labour in the last year. Labour has more members, about 500,000, than all the other British political parties put together. The obvious contradiction is at the heart of Labour’s dilemma. Mr. Corbyn, a man of the hard left who also wants to renationalize the utilities and make Britain non-nuclear, is deeply skeptical of the United States and considers NATO an outdated, aggressive alliance. With his anti-establishment stands, he has brought many young people and many hard-left advocates, some of whom had been expelled under former Prime Minister Yet polls show that Labour under Mr. Corbyn is sure to lose the next election to the governing Conservatives, and lose it badly, doing worse But in 2015, the party was essentially wiped out in Scotland and won only 232 seats in all of Britain, down from 258 in 2010: the worst showing for the party since 1983. It was led at that time by Michael Foot, whose election platform was described as “the longest suicide note in history,” and yet whose policies most closely resemble those of Mr. Corbyn’s. Labour members of Parliament who survived the 2015 debacle fear worse to come under Mr. Corbyn, 67, whose election as leader was entirely unexpected. He was the beneficiary of weak opponents and of a strong vote from new party members and anyone who was willing to pay three pounds to vote, member or not. First elected to Parliament in 1983, Mr. Corbyn had always been on Labour’s fringe. He supported And while Labour officially supported Britain’s remaining in the European Union, Mr. Corbyn was halfhearted at best. A former shadow chancellor of the Exchequer, Ed Balls, in Mr. Balls wrote: “Refusing to listen to the electorate has never been a winning formula any more than Jeremy Corbyn thinking the volume of the cheering from your core supporters is a reliable guide to wider public opinion.” Labour legislators have also complained bitterly about Mr. Corbyn’s disorganization, his lack of interest in reaching out to centrist voters and his tendency to moralize and speak only to crowds of supporters. At crucial moments, they say, he is often unavailable, growing vegetables or making jam, two of his hobbies. Fearing another quick general election after Mr. Corbyn won a court case allowing him to run without being renominated by the legislators. The rebels finally united behind Owen Smith, 46, an English-born member of Parliament from a Welsh seat, who was first elected in 2010 after a career as a radio producer and a lobbyist for pharmaceutical companies. Mr. Smith is considered “soft left,” but even he is to the left of Mr. Miliband. While he has done reasonably well in a series of debates with Mr. Corbyn, the large influx of new members, enthused by Mr. Corbyn’s harder-left policies, suggest that when the votes are counted on Sept. 24, Mr. Corbyn will be re-elected. A likely Corbyn victory has added to the concerns of the Labour legislators, who fear that they will be challenged in their constituencies by more militant left-wing Corbyn supporters, a process known as reselection. Corbyn backers have threatened mandatory reselection for all Labour legislators, but a Conservative change to the election boundaries is a clearer threat. Under Mr. Cameron, the Conservatives pushed through a law that would reduce the number of parliamentary constituencies to 600 from 650, while trying to equalize the number of voters in each constituency — the same reasoning behind redistricting in the United States after a census. But, as in the United States, the devil is in the details of how the constituencies are redrawn, and there are already charges of gerrymandering by the government. A review of the new boundaries has suggested that 200 Labour seats would be affected, with up to 30 being scrapped, because many Labour seats in Wales and the northeast have smaller populations. By contrast, the Conservatives face losing only 10 to 15 seats, New boundaries will mean a new selection process for many Labour legislators, which could mean that those opposed to Mr. Corbyn would be rejected. So there is increasing talk of Labour legislators’ forming their own parliamentary opposition in the House of Commons, where they would, by their numbers, become the official opposition. Some analysts have suggested that there is a pro-European, centrist party in the making that could also attract Liberal Democrats and some Conservatives. But the British political system punishes third parties, and everyone is mindful of the fate of the Social Democratic Party, formed in 1981 by Labour legislators who revolted against the party’s antinuclear and anti-European policies. After a lively start, that party merged with the Liberals and finally disappeared. Mr. Corbyn has said he “hopes Labour M.P.s will recognize the outcome of this election and not walk away.” More likely, they will hope for an early election in which the Corbyn-led party is badly defeated but they somehow survive, resulting in his resignation. But having seized the party machinery, Mr. Corbyn seems unlikely to give it up, even in defeat. In his view, and that of his followers, he is building a socialist movement for the future, and he and his followers regard the centrists, in the words of the former Labour legislator Chris Williamson, as Conservative