Partycraft and the Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn’s election as party leader marked a seismic moment in Labour history. Where Aneurin Bevan and Tony Benn failed, Corbyn was able to succeed in becoming leader of the Labour Party from the left of the party, being elected on a platform of pro-nationalisation and anti-austerity economics following Labour’s 2015 general election defeat. His leadership faced many challenges, including a hostile Parliamentary Labour Party, the issue of Brexit dividing his own party and voter base, and criticisms of the handling of antisemitism in the party. Corbyn’s Labour Party were able to win 40% of the vote and deny Theresa May a Parliamentary majority in 2017 yet, 2 years later, with the issue of Brexit dividing the country further, Labour lost over 2.5 million votes and the Conservative Party won their largest Parliamentary majority since 1987. Party leadership models have been used to analyse the effectiveness of political party leadership, however there is a research gap in regard to analysing the effectiveness of opposition leaders. To analyse the effectiveness of Corbyn’s leadership, Jim Bulpitt’s Statecraft model has been adapted to look at opposition leaders. This adapted leadership model is known as the Partycraft model. Partycraft looks at the following criteria: acquisition of leadership, party management, positioning, and competence. Using the aforementioned criteria, this thesis will utilise the Partycraft model, and substantial research questions, to look at the effectiveness of Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party.