Catalogue Number
NMLH.2024.60.1
Object Name
poster
Title
'Jeremy Corbyn Straight Talking Honest Politics'
Place
UK
People
Jeremy Corbyn, Labour Party
Events
2015 Labour Party leadership election
Description
A red and white poster - text on the red areas is white, text on the white areas is red. Reads: 'Jeremy Corbyn. Straight talking, honest politics. The bottom of the poster contains social media details about the Jeremy Corbyn leadership campaign.
This poster was made to support Jeremy Corbyn's candidacy during the 2015 Labour Party leadership election. The leadership contest was called following the resignation of then-leader Ed Milliband. Miliband resigned as Labour had performed poorly in the 2015 general election. Jeremy Corbyn ran on an anti-austerity platform, as he felt disillusioned with the lack of socialist policies being championed by Labour at that time. While he received the least nominations from other MPs, Corbyn's campaign was popular with the membership, and he was elected as leader with 59% of the vote. Many people who had also been disillusioned with the lack of socialist political party options in mainstream British politics joined the Labour Party specifically to elect Corbyn as leader, and others joined following his election to express support for his policies. However, centrist Labour Party members, such as New Labour government politicians, opposed his leadership. Corbyn resigned as leader following the
2019 general election, and was succeeded by Keir Starmer in April 2020.
Jeremy Corbyn had been a member of the Labour Party since 1965, and defined his politics as socialist. The Labour Party removed a commitment to socialism from their policies in the 1990s, and took a more centrist approach to many issues which socialist members like Corbyn opposed - as an MP Corbyn often voted against the party line, particularly on issues relating to war, and nuclear weapons as a committed member of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, and the Stop the War Coalition. He became MP for Islington North in 1983, and retained the seat as an independent after he resigned from the Labour Party ahead of the 2024 General Election. His resignation from the party came after he had the whip withdrawn in 2020 for claiming that accusations of Labour Party antisemitism during his leadership were being weaponised for political gain - he retained membership of the party but had to sit as an independent in the House of Commons, and was informed he was not going to be reselected as
Labour's candidate for Islington North, prompting his resignation from the party.
Multimedia
