Far-left British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn channeled his inner Stacey Abrams on Saturday after his blowout loss in the U.K. general election, declaring he “won the argument” in the election despite suffering the worst political loss in the U.K. since 1935.
In an op-ed published in The Guardian, a left-wing British publication, Corbyn blamed everything from “the financial crash of 2008” and billionaires to Brexit.
“I am proud that on austerity, on corporate power, on inequality and on the climate emergency we have won the arguments and rewritten the terms of political debate,” Corbyn declared. “But I regret that we did not succeed in converting that into a parliamentary majority for change.”
Labour sources told Sky News: “Any attempt to blame this on Brexit is folly. The one thing that came up time and time again from voters – Corbyn. Whether that was his support of the IRA, his antisemitism or limited grasp of economics. He was the problem.”
It’s hard to argue that Corbyn won anything given the massive defeat that the U.K. handed him late this week.
“The scale of Labour’s defeat predicted by the shock exit poll would leave the party with the fewest number of seats since the 1935 election,” The Telegraph reported. “It would also be the first time since the inter-war years that Labour has won fewer than 200 seats.”
The New York Times described the election as a “landslide victory” for the Conservative Party and acknowledged that it was the worst defeat for Labour in over 80 years.
Corbyn continued, “Progress does not come in a simple straight line. Even though we lost seats heavily on Thursday, I believe the manifesto of 2019 and the movement behind it will be seen as historically important – a real attempt at building a force powerful enough to transform society for the many, not the few. For the first time in decades, many people have had hope for a better future. … There is no doubt that our policies are popular, from public ownership of rail and key utilities to a massive house-building programme and a pay rise for millions. The question is, how can we succeed in future where we didn’t this time?”
“The media attacks on the Labour party for the last four and a half years were more ferocious than ever – and of course that has an impact on the outcome of elections. Anyone who stands up for real change will be met by the full force of media opposition,” Corbyn continued. “The party needs a more robust strategy to meet this billionaire-owned and influenced hostility head-on and, where possible, turn it to our advantage.”
Corbyn’s remarks are eerily similar to rhetoric used by failed far-left Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stace Abrams, who lost Georgia’s governor race in 2018 by nearly 55,000 voters.
Abrams, despite her loss and lack of evidence that anything in the election was unfair, has falsely claimed on numerous occasions that she won the election.
In an interview that was posted to Corbyn’s Twitter account, the far-left leader, who announced this week that he is stepping down from the party, said, “Obviously very sad at the result we’ve achieved and very sad at those colleagues that lost their seats in the election and very sad for many people in this country who will now have a government that is continuing policies of austerity and many of the poorest communities I think will suffer very badly from the economic strategy that I suspect the Prime Minister will take forward. But also, I have pride in our manifesto that we put forward and all the policies we put forward which actually had huge public support on issues of Universal Credit, the Green Industrial Revolution, and investment for the future. But this election was taken over ultimately by Brexit and we as a party represent people who both voted remain and leave and my whole strategy was to reach out beyond the Brexit divide to try to bring people together, because ultimately the country has to come together.”
Our aim was to bring people together and offer hope. pic.twitter.com/OLTC2ifPxB
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) December 13, 2019