As landscape changes, caravan rolls on

Turmoil in Britain's labor party leaves field clear for Cameron to strengthen China ties

Britons don't normally do revolution, the last major upheaval here happening in the mid-17th century when a rather puritanical, austere military leader called Oliver Cromwell headed up the parliamentary forces that toppled King Charles I, leading to a Commonwealth that lasted barely 50 years before the monarchy was re-established.

Now there's a political revolution going on that seems to have crept up on an unsuspecting British public.

China's President Xi Jinping may well be faced with a changing political landscape when he arrives for a state visit in October, but what won't change are Britain's relations with China, already entering what officials from both sides are calling a golden era.

But it's now clear that the comfortable days of this country's domestic democracy being dominated by two political parties are gone; the Labour Party, led by Ed Miliband, was so sure of victory in the general election in May, buoyed by opinion polls that showed Labour at least neck and neck with the Conservatives headed by David Cameron, that moving vans were readied to move Miliband and his family into the prime ministerial residence at 10 Downing Street.

The wheels had in fact started to fall off the Labour Party's electoral bandwagon when Nicola Sturgeon was elected leader of a resurgent Scottish Nationalist Party, which began showing a massive lead over Labour in Scotland, previously regarded as rock-solidly behind Labour.

Miliband, already faced with a hostile media, refused to agree to any coalition or agreement with the SNP that could have kept the Conservatives out of power in the British parliament.

In the event, that wasn't necessary. Dramatically, Cameron won a clear majority in Parliament, his erstwhile Liberal Democrat coalition partners were savaged at the polls - from 51 members of parliament to just eight - and Labour was humiliated.

Miliband immediately resigned as leader of the opposition, throwing his party into disarray. Sturgeon's SNP members swept to a landslide victory in Scotland, winning 56 out of 59 seats at Westminster. Labour retained just one north of the border.

Which is where the revolution eventually kicked in.

Labour had a history of inner turmoil before Tony Blair steadied the ship by making it more voter-friendly in 1997, when it won the first of three general elections. But under Gordon Brown, it disintegrated, with the public put off by the barely concealed in-fighting among party leaders.

Politics in general, ever since Blair's victory with his New Labour movement, had drifted steadily to the centre, fighting with Conservatives wanting to occupy the same ground. After all, most British voters reflect the country's preference for a less challenging centrist approach, which takes the best from left and right. Not great on confrontation, the British public.

That's all changed.

As Labour politicians jostled for the position of leader in the wake of Miliband's abrupt departure, the party became embroiled in a furious public row over why the party lost so disastrously in May, and what its future policy should be.

Three protagonists emerged, labelled by many commentators as the best of a lackluster bunch. Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall were already trying to figure out what policies would bring them success in the leadership bid when the fat was truly thrown on the fire.

Labour members of parliament, eager to enliven the debate and make it more interesting, gave left-wing veteran Jeremy Corbyn enough backing to allow him to stand as an official candidate. They, and many others in the party, assumed that Corbyn stood no chance, because his extreme left wing views wouldn't sit well with the bulk of the members.

They got that one wrong. Corbyn has attracted the support of four powerful trade unions, all of whom are urging their members to elect him as leader in September.

He's consistently ahead in opinion polls conducted within the party membership, and his rise has left fellow-candidates scrambling around to embrace policies they think will beat him.

Many commentators now assume Corbyn, who has never held an official position in over 40 years as a politician, could well win, becoming leader of the Opposition.

That, they say, means the Labour Party will become pretty much unelectable in the polls for as long as 10 years because the British electorate simply doesn't embrace extreme policies and politicians any more.

So Corbyn's chances of becoming prime minister are, realistically, remote indeed. But if that ever happened, you could expect Briton to pull out of NATO, to scoop Britain's nuclear deterrent, a surge in trade union influence, and possibly, moves to transform Britain into a republic, given that Corbyn is a staunch anti-monarchist.

There's a saying that a British government is only as good as its opposition - and with Labour beating itself to death, the Liberal Democrats reduced to a shadow of their former selves, and the resurgence of the SNP, there are stormy seas ahead.

What would the changes mean for British foreign policy, particularly toward China, where relationships have steadily become warmer over the past 20 years?

Given that there is little or no chance of a Corbyn-led government in the next decade, according to many observers, the UK's relationship with China, driven by a mix of pragmatism, trade and existing commercial ties, can only grow stronger, as Cameron's Conservative government is determined to build on the existing framework, and will now have a free hand to do so, given the lack of a determined opposition.

The author is managing editor of China Daily Europe, based in London. Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com