Jeremy Corbyn: The Global Ghost Britain Can’t Quite Exorcise
Jeremy Corbyn, the accidental icon who once made a red rose look like a Molotov cocktail to some and a peace offering to others, is enjoying a second act. From the back benches of the House of Commons, the man who was supposed to be the ghost at Labour’s centrist feast is now being courted by everyone from Brazilian trade-unionists to German climate activists. His name has become shorthand for a particular flavour of left-wing politics that refuses to stay politely buried—like the guest who brings his own teabags to a five-star hotel and then insists the kettle is bugged.
Internationally, Corbyn’s resurrection is less about policy and more about projection. In Latin America, where pink tides keep coming in like a stubborn ocean, he is the anti-IMF elder whose refusal to sing “God Save the King” is interpreted as solidarity with anyone who’s ever had a gunboat parked off their coast. In India, #Corbyn trended briefly after he praised striking farmers—mainly because Indian Twitter mistook him for a Bollywood villain who’d stolen the hero’s moustache, but the sentiment stuck. Meanwhile, American progressives, still traumatised by Bernie Sanders’ second defeat, watch Corbyn’s grassroots rallies on YouTube the way teenagers binge true-crime podcasts: equal parts horror and admiration at how close to the cliff one can skate without quite falling off.
The irony, of course, is that Corbyn’s domestic influence is microscopic. Keir Starmer treats him like radioactive Tupperware—necessary for historical context but stored in the back of the fridge. Yet abroad, Corbyn remains a Rorschach test for what the global left wants to see in itself. French insoumises quote him in Strasbourg; South African shack-dwellers paint his face on murals next to Chris Hani and Frida Kahlo; Japanese graduate students write theses on “Corbynism as post-Blairite hauntology.” Somewhere, a Macedonian bot farm is probably A/B-testing Corbyn memes for the next election cycle, because that’s the century we live in.
The wider significance is that Corbyn proves ideology now travels faster than institutions. While Westminster obsesses over whips and select committees, the Corbyn brand is franchised across continents like a vegan McDonald’s nobody asked for but everybody photographs. His anti-austerity message lands differently in countries where “austerity” means literal hunger rather than fewer trains to Brighton. When he tweets about Gaza or coups in Bolivia, the Foreign Office rolls its eyes, but millions of people whose national newspapers still call it “the Twitter” retweet him like scripture. Soft power, it turns out, is just hard power with worse Wi-Fi.
And yet, there’s a darker punchline. Corbyn’s global fandom exists precisely because he’s powerless. Martyrs are easier to ship than manifestos; the supply chain is simpler when you don’t have to deliver anything. The same activists who cheer his principled stands abroad would probably sue him for lost wages if he actually ran their local council. It’s the political equivalent of loving sharks from a safe boat—majestic, misunderstood, and best kept in deep water.
So what does the world actually learn from the curious case of Jeremy Corbyn? That charisma without office is a renewable resource; that the left’s favourite pastime is still relitigating 2016; and that in the attention economy, exile is just another form of branding. Corbyn will never be prime minister, but he’ll be a Zoom guest at a thousand teach-ins, a hologram at climate summits, a cautionary tale and a comfort blanket rolled into one. He is the ghost who refuses to haunt quietly, rattling chains that turn out to be made of recyclable plastic.
In the end, Corbyn’s greatest trick was convincing the planet that Britain still matters enough for its backbenchers to be global protagonists. That’s either a triumph of hope over geography, or the darkest joke yet in the comedy of nations. Either way, the kettle’s still on—bug optional.
