Jeremy Corbyn is a 'disaster', says Stephen Hawking

Jeremy Corbyn elected Labour leader in landslide victory

12 September

Jeremy Corbyn has been elected as the new Labour leader after just one round of voting, leaving the three other candidates trailing in his wake.

• Jeremy Corbyn's policies: how will he lead Labour?

He received 59.5 per cent of the vote, and a huge cheer from Labour delegates. The margin of victory was much larger than had been predicted, putting Corbyn in an unassailable position.

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"Those who think they can get rid of Jeremy Corbyn any time soon are going to have to think again," said the BBC's chief political correspondent. "He has a rock-solid mandate, an unbelieveable mandate"

Moments after his victory had been announced, Corbyn took to the stage at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre in Westminster to chants of "yes we did". When they had died down, he paid tribute to his predecessor, Ed Miliband, and made a pointed attack on the media coverage he received.

But he struck a conciliatory note too. He praised the other candidates, including Liz Kendall, the most right-wing of his rivals, and described her as a friend who stood up for what she believed in. He also welcome new members who had joined the party in order to vote in the leadership contest, 85 per cent of whom voted for him, and invited those who had turned their back on the party to return to the fold.

Much of Corbyn's speech represented a call for more generous treatment of vulnerable people at home and abroad, including refugees fleeing the war in Syria.

And lending his support to Sadiq Khan, who was yesterday elected as Labour's candidate for London Mayor, Corbyn said the capital must be able to accommodate people of all economic groups. "I am fed up with the social cleansing of London by the Conservatives," he said.

Speaking shortly before Corbyn had been announced as the new Labour leader, Khan himself made a plea for party unity.

"Whatever happens over the course of this morning, we must pull together," he said, "for the sake of everyone in Britain who is struggling to make ends meet."

That unity may be hard won, as Corbyn has little natural support among Labour MPs at Westminster. Within moments of Corbyn's victory, the shadow health minister Jamie Reed had resigned from the Labour front bench, citing policy differences. Other resignations are expected to follow.

At the outset of the leadership contest, the Daily Telegraph says, "Mr Corbyn had just 10 of the [35] nominations he needed. Bombarded with tweets and emails from activists demanding a 'full debate' through the inclusion of the Left on the ballot paper, more MPs reluctantly caved in and nominated him."

Odds of 100-1 were offered on a Corbyn win at the beginning of the contest. Tthe same price was available for the return of Tony Blair.

"Nobody," says the , "at least until his campaign gained what now appears to have been an unstoppable momentum towards victory – thought of him as leadership material, least of all himself."

This week, Corbyn will face a wide range of challenges. He had been expected to appear on the Andrew Marr show tomorrow, where he would have shared the sofa with Israeli prime minister Bejamin Netanyahu. Corbyn has been a trenchant critic of Israeli policy, and has been accused of associating with anti-semites.

He has now pulled out of that engagement, but he will not be able to avoid his first head-to-head meeting with David Cameron on Wednesday at Prime Minister's Questions. He may also soon face a vote on military action in Syria, which he opposes, and which many of his MPs support.

Before Corbyn was confirmed as leader, Tom Watson was, as expected, confirmed as deputy leader of the Labour party after three rounds of voting. His nearest rival was Stella Creasy.

He described Labour as "the last line of defence" against the Conservative government. "There is only one Labour, and it's bigger than its leaders and deputy leaders," he said. "It's the guardian of decency and fairness and justice in the United Kingdom."

He said that the party could be pro-business as well as pro-worker, but he also described the free market as "arbitrary and unfair".

"To all those Tories sniggering up their sleeves and saying we can't win in 2020, I say only this," he said. "Watch this space. Watch your backs"

Corbyn, too,finished his speech with a rallying cry. "Poverty isn't inevitable," he said. "Things can, and they will, change."

Labour leader: Jeremy Corbyn 'ready' even if his shocked MPs aren't

11 September

On a day marked by tears (from Liz Kendall), glee (Len McCluskey), disdain (David Cameron) and huge embarrassment (for Andy Burnham), Jeremy Corbyn declared himself "extremely confident" of being able to put together a shadow cabinet, despite many current front-benchers refusing to serve under the left-winger.

Asked by Jon Snow of Channel 4 News whether he was scared of the leadership role he looks certain to be handed tomorrow morning, the 66-year-old MP for Islington North, who has never held a ministerial role, said: "I'm very well aware of the responsibilities. [Am I] scared? No."

Votes are currently being counted and the result will be given in private to Corbyn and his three rivals – Yvette Cooper, Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall – at about 11am tomorrow. It will be made public half an hour later.

Tears as rivals concede (sort of)

Kendall, the most right-wing of the four, effectively conceded defeat even before the polls closed at midday on Thursday. Close to tears, the Daily Mirror reports, she told a London audience that she would refuse to serve under Corbyn. "His politics and policies are the same as in the 1980s – and will end up with the same result."

The Cooper and Burnham camps both made it clear within minutes of the polls closing that they did not expect to beat Corbyn. The Daily Telegraph reports a senior member of Team Cooper saying: "Yvette had a surge but it looks like it might have been too late."

A senior Burnham supporter said: "The most likely outcome is that Jeremy will win". Burnham himself tried later to suggest that it wasn't all over and that he had an "outside" chance of winning.

The Burnham 'sting'

Burnham, the only one of the three rivals to have agreed in advance to serve in a Corbyn shadow cabinet, has been embarrassed by a 'sting' operation which caught him admitting that Corbyn would be a "disaster" as Labour leader.

Posing as a potential donor, an undercover reporter for The Sun attended a reception at Labour's London HQ and taped Burnham saying: "Privately, it is a disaster for the Labour party. I mean, publicly, he is a nice man, a nice individual. He believes in the things he campaigns on so he's not a fraud in any way. But I think the public will think Labour has given up on ever being a government again."

The Guardian says the 'sting' reflects The Sun's "hostility to Burnham due to his refusal to forgive the newspaper for its coverage of the Hillsborough disaster. He has refused to speak to the paper during his campaign."

The Burnham camp is threatening to refer the incident to the newspaper regulator Ipso.

McCluskey celebrates early

Len McCluskey, leader of the mighty Unite union, is not waiting for tomorrow morning's result before celebrating the Labour party's apparent shift to the left. Even if Corbyn doesn't win the election, he said yesterday, he's changed the terms of the debate.

"He has lit up our movement in a way that I didn't think was possible," McCluskey told the BBC.

Intriguingly, however, it appears that union members were not the keenest to vote in the leadership election.

Full party members and the new 'supporters' – who paid £3 for the privilege – were the ones who turned out in the greatest numbers. Just one in three union members are believed to have cast a vote – "far lower than was hoped by the union bosses who signed them up," says the Telegraph.

Cameron's first attack

David Cameron is also predicting a Corbyn win, it seems, and, like his Cabinet colleague George Osborne, has decided that utter disdain for the new Labour leadership is the best solution.

Having watched the leadership race "with some bewilderment", Cameron will use a speech today to say: "This is now a party that has completely vacated the intellectual playing field and no longer represents working people. It is arguing at the extremes of the debate, simply wedded to more spending, more borrowing, and more taxes.

"They pose a clear threat to the financial security of every family in Britain."

Corbyn remains unbowed

Corbyn, however, is sticking to his guns. In another foreign policy remark bound to upset his enemies, he said yesterday he was "unclear" why the British jihadist Reyaad Khan had been killed in Syria by an RAF drone.

Corbyn confirmed that he would not have authorised such a strike, the Daily Mail reports. "I'm unclear as to the point of killing the individual by this drone attack," he said.

To which a Downing Street spokesman responded: "I think the Prime Minister set out very clearly… that (Khan) posed a threat to Britain and the lives of British people." The allegation was that Khan was planning a VJ Day terror attack on central London and that his assassination was an act of "self-defence".

On the domestic policy front, Corbyn received a huge cheer when he told a final rally in Islington last night that he would introduce a punishing windfall tax on bank profits.

Britain's banks, he told supporters in the constituency he has represented as a backbench MP since 1983, had better "watch out".

How Jeremy Corbyn refused to 'do a John Sergeant' and bow out

10 September

Jeremy Corbyn was asked by one of his most senior supporters to "do a John Sergeant" and bow out of the Labour leadership race, it has been claimed by the BBC. He refused to do so – and now looks set to be elected leader.

Corbyn's popularity might be explained by a new Ashcroft poll which shows that most Labour supporters feel party principles should not be ditched for the sake of electoral victory.

However, despite the fast approaching voting deadline, many Labour supporters remain undecided. They include the MP Jon Cruddas, who nominated Corbyn but now fears he may have promoted "an early 80s Trotskyist tribute act".

The 'John Sergeant' approach

The argument of the senior supporter who is said to have approached Corbyn in the last few weeks was that he had proved his point that the party's left-wing needed representing in the election, but surely he realised that, if he went on to win, it would be against the wishes of the majority of Labour MPs and could destroy the party's chances of returning to government in 2020?

Team Corbyn is not confirming the story – the first 'scoop' by Laura Kuenssberg in her new role as the BBC's political editor – but nor is anyone denying it.

Kuenssberg understands the Corbyn supporter was motivated by the fact that the 66-year-old Islington North MP had never intended to win. "The message was, this has gone far enough, time to stop", she says.

The Week is reminded of John Sergeant's solution to his unexpected popularity in the 2008 edition of Strictly Come Dancing.

Every week, Sergeant, a former BBC political reporter with two left feet, finished bottom of the judges' scoreboard but was kept in the competition by public enthusiasm for a 'game' underdog. Eventually, he pulled out of the show, saying: "The trouble is that there is now a real danger that I might win the competition. Even for me that would be a joke too far."

Corbyn, however, appears to have got a taste for the idea of leading Labour and certainly does not see his popularity as a joke – even if his opponents, inside and outside the party, do.

George Osborne's intervention

George Osborne is the latest to offer his view on a Corbyn victory. "It does seem that a generation's work has unravelled in the space of 12 months," says the Conservative Chancellor in an interview with the New Statesman.

"He [Corbyn] is clearly being supported by a large body of activists in the Labour party and supporters in the trade union movement. So it's not about one individual. It's a party and a movement that I think is heading in the wrong direction."

Which won't do Osborne's own chances of becoming the next Tory prime minister any harm, of course, though he refused to be drawn on whether he would stand when David Cameron bows out, as he has promised to do before the 2020 election.

Labour principles come first

What Osborne would not have seen before giving his interview was new polling from Lord Ashcroft, released to The Guardian, which helps explain the Corbyn phenomenon.

More than half of Labour's loyalist voters (52 per cent) think that maintaining party principles is more important than winning elections, the poll shows. Only 48 per cent believe it's all right for Labour to make compromises in order to succeed electorally.

"Labour loyalists" are defined for the purposes of the Ashcroft poll as those who voted for Labour in 2010 and 2015. As for those who decided not to vote Labour in 2015, thus handing the election to the Tories, the polling confirms that Ed Miliband was "one of the single biggest reasons" why they went elsewhere.

Still undecided…

With the mid-day voting deadline upon us, there remain complaints that not everyone has received their ballot papers – though some voters have yet to decide how to fill them in anyway.

Jon Cruddas, former head of policy under Ed Miliband, surprised Radio 4's Today programme this morning by admitting that he had still not made up his mind, and would only do so at the last minute.

He was one of the Labour MPs who nominated Corbyn because he believed the left should be represented in the election, but was now worried he might have promoted "an early 80s Trotskyist tribute act". Such a culture would be "very hostile to anyone who just disagrees", he said, and "could just collapse in front of the electorate".

Laura Kuenssberg said one senior Labour figure had told her he feared a Corbyn victory would lead to another "civil war" of the kind the party went through in the 1980s. "I've seen this movie before," he told her, "and it does not end well."