Loved by the grass roots of his party, but at loggerheads with senior Labour Party MPs, the new Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, faced down doubters at the annual party conference in the English seaside resort of Brighton.
For non-Labour supporters who watched his move closely, it is still too early to tell if he has the stuff of leadership that would lead him to become prime minister of the UK. Yes, sceptics in his party doubt his credentials on the economy and on Syria, but he did reassure the British public on the whole that he would never push the nuclear button.
Ahead of the conference, the Conservative Party of Prime Minister David Cameron described Corbyn as a “threat to our national security”. The new Labour Party leader did, however, avoid a potentially damaging vote on the future of Britain’s nuclear defence deterrent Trident — to which he is opposed — although deep divisions on the hot-button continued to flare up.
The newly-elected leader insisted he would not use nuclear weapons if he became prime minister, adding that they “didn’t do the USA much good on 9/11”. However, senior members of his party are at odds with Corbyn on the issue. In his own non-confrontational style, Corbyn said he would try to resolve such divisions by persuasion, promising to introduce a “new type of politics” that would involve consensual policy-making.
