What links Edward
Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange with Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie
Sanders. On the face of it, not very much but I think there might actually be a
link, however small.
If we could go back to
the beginning of the summer and ask people what the likelihood was that a
seemingly life long, left wing backbencher would be elected Leader of the
Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition by a larger margin than Tony Blair
they would most likely tell us that we were crazy. That it wasn’t going to
happen. But it did.
Similarly if we could
go back to last year and tell people that the person coming in second behind
Hilary Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination would be
self-described democratic socialist Bernie Sanders – and what’s more that a few
weeks ago he was within seven percentage points of her in the crucial state of
Iowa - once again we would probably be told that we were engaging in a bit of
wish fulfilment. But that’s what’s happening.
This is the world we
now live in, where the populist politicians who speak their minds, hold to
their own views and aren’t tied to the party line seem to be doing well, seem
to be being successful, whereas the career politicians and the party loyalists
– at least in Labour’s case – can’t break through.
But the question
therefore becomes where this populist support come from has. It seems that
those who aren’t talking business as usual are finding support that previously
was not there. So what has happened in
the intervening years?
Now I’m not saying that
the actions of Snowden, Manning and Assange have contributed to this, but over
the last few years the various files that have been leaked by Edward Snowden
and by Julian Assange through WikiLeaks have revealed several things about
world governments and how they have been acting, which while many of them may
have been perfectly legitimate, - depending of course on your point of view –
has left many people feeling unhappy with the their current governments and how
politicians act and behave.
Therefore it makes at
least some sense that come the Labour leadership election and the Democratic
primaries – the first real opportunity in the last couple of years to change
the direction of major governing parties – that those speaking against
“business as usual” would start to come out on top. They are tapping into the
dissatisfaction that younger people feel about the state of the world, as shown
quite starkly in the leaked documents and reminding them that there is another
option available.
Now I am not suggesting
that this is the only reason for the sudden success of Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie
Sanders, nor am I even suggesting that it is the reason. Rather I believe that
the actions of Snowden, Manning and Assange contributed in at least some way to
the political earthquakes that we now see going on around us and in America.
