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Prime Minister of the United Kingdom | |
| Predecessor | George Osborne (acting) David Cameron |
| Deputy Prime Minister | Tom Watson |
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Leader of the Labour Party | |
| Predecessor | Ed Miliband |
| Deputy Leader | Tom Watson |
| Born | 26 May 1949 (age 68) Chippenham, Wiltshire, England, UK |
| Spouse | Jane Chapman (m. 1974–79) Claudia Bracchitta (m. 1987–99) Laura Álvarez (m. 2013) |
| Political Party | Labour Party |
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May 1949) is a British politician who has served as Leader of the Labour Party since 12 September 2015 and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since 16 June 2016. He has served as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983 and was elected as Leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Ideologically, he identifies as a democratic socialist.
Corbyn is the youngest of four sons of David Benjamin Corbyn, an electrical engineer (1915-1986) and Naomi Loveday (née Josling) (1915-1987), a maths teacher. Both were Labour Party members who met at an event in support of the short-lived Spanish Republic. Corbyn was born in Chippenham, Wiltshire and moved to Pave Lane, Shropshire when he was seven years old, after his father purchased Yew Tree Manor; a seventeenth-century country house which was once part of the Duke of Sunderland's Lilleshall estate.
The young Jeremy was educated at Castle Hill School and attended Adams' Grammar School as a day student. It was here that the young Jeremy's interest in politics was first sparked, having joined the Labour Party aged 16, the League Against Cruel Sports and became an active figure within The Wrekin Young Socialists. He decided against joining his school's Cadet Force and successfully campaigned for Prime Minister Harold Wilson's re-election at the 1966 general election; where the Labour government increased its parliamentary majority from four to 96 seats.
Two brothers had went on to study at Imperial College in London, but having left school with two E-grade A-Levels; Corbyn decided against applying for university and applied to do Voluntary Service Overseas in Jamaica; which had only just became independent from the UK six years earlier. His time in Jamaica working as a youth worker and Geography teacher had a deep impact on him, influencing his politics and was exposed to poverty unlike anything he'd seen in Britain at that time. He returned home via Argentina, Uruguay, Chile and Brazil; where he took part in a student anti-military government protest in São Paulo, and witnessed the atmosphere surrounding Salvador Allende's Popular Unity government in Santiago at a May Day march.
Corbyn returning home to the UK in 1971, and found worked as an official for the National Union of Tailors and Garment Workers. He enrolled in a course in Trade Union Studies at North London Polytechnic; but left after a year without completing the course after a series of arguments with his tutors over the curriculum.
He married then-Labour Councillor Jane Chapman in 1974, and divorced in 1979. The marriage produced no children, and after their marriage ended, he embarked on a tour of East Germany with Diane Abbott; whom he had a brief relationship with, and would later go on to become the first Black British female MP and a Cabinet Minister. Corbyn and Chapman have remained friends since, and she later revealed that she voted for her ex-husband at the 2015 Labour Party leadership election.
In 1987, he married Chilean exile Claudia Bracchitta, with whom he has three sons: Benjamin (b. 1988), Sebastian "Seb" (b. 1992) and Thomas "Tommy" Corbyn (b. 1994). Corbyn missed the birth of his youngest son as he was lecturing National Union of Public Employees members at the same hospital. The couple divorced in 1999 after a disagreement over Benjamin's education; Bracchitta wanted him to attend the fee-paying Queen Elizabeth Boy's School in Barnet, while Jeremy wanted his son to go to Holloway School- the local comprehensive. He did not believe that his son should have had to travel outwith the borough to go to a selective grammar school, but his wife did not think Benjamin would receive a high enough standard of education at Holloway; which had been on the Ofsted list of failing schools for three years. In the end, Bracchitta won the dispute and accepted her son's offer without consulting her husband. In June 2015, Corbyn described his relationship with his second wife as "very well".
In 1999, shortly after his divorce from Bracchitta, his old parliamentary friend and fellow socialist Tony Benn introduced him to former Mexican human rights lawyer, Laura Álvarez. The pair had a distance relationship for 12 years until 2011, when she moved to London permanently. The couple married at a ceremony in Mexico in 2012 and live in Finsbury Park, North London.
He became a vegetarian at the age of 20, doesn't own a car, uses public transport when possible and has advocated abolition of the monarchy. However, while he said his preference would be for Britain to become a republic with an elected head of state, he said "it is not a battle I am fighting". Corbyn is a supporter of Arsenal Football Club, and interests include: jam-making, "drain spotting" (manhole covers), tending his allotment, reading and writing. He can speak Spanish fluently and demonstrated this when he read a eulogy to Tony Benn over telephone on a Venezuelan talk show after Benn's death in May 2014.
He used to have a pet cat called Harold in the 1970s; named after then-UK Prime Minister Harold Wilson. In the 1980s, he had a pet dog called Mango, who was described as "his only constant companion" by The Observer in 1984. Currently, he has a cat called El Gato, and mentioned in August 2017 that he feared his cat was a bit of a Tory due to it's "disappointing individualism and lack of concern for others".