“Jeremy Corbyn represented a challenge to the government,” said Ben Page, chief executive of the polling firm Ipsos MORI, adding that Labour’s platform spoke to an anti-elite anxiety as widespread in Britain as elsewhere. One unnamed Corbyn aide even told Politico this year that the Labour leader planned to copy media strategies from the Trump playbook.

But big differences in the political landscape, not to mention the candidates themselves, limit such comparisons. Corbyn’s electoral success can also be read as a backlash to Britain’s rightward swing in recent years, including last summer’s vote to leave the European Union. He has some anti-establishment rhetoric, yes, but that rhetoric and the support it attracts are distinct from the ethos of Brexit or Trump.

As politicians, Corbyn and Trump do share some similarities. Both are roughly the same age but entered mainstream politics only recently. They grew their support through social media and rallies, while facing ridicule from the political elite and media outlets. At certain points, they have shared some views on international affairs, criticizing foreign intervention and the logic of NATO. And both Corbyn and Trump stand accused of making unrealistic promises on the campaign trail but ultimately performed better than expected against more established female politicians (though both Corbyn’s Labour and Trump received fewer votes than their rivals).

The contrasts in the two men’s backgrounds far outweigh the similarities, however. Corbyn is an old-school British leftist who cut his teeth in the antinuclear protests of the 1980s. Trump is a real estate developer turned reality television star who made his political career by suggesting that President Barack Obama was born in Kenya. While Corbyn was riding his bike to work in Parliament, Trump was flying between resorts in a personally branded private jet.

These different backgrounds are reflected in their ideologies. The British politician has a dogmatic view of social democratic policies and has spent decades in that ideological world. Trump’s political views seem to be malleable: A former Democrat, he is now a Republican who enjoys the support of the far-right fringe. Though Corbyn was once a leftist Euroskeptic, he campaigned for Britain to remain in the European Union last year. Meanwhile, Trump dubbed himself “Mr. Brexit” and formed a personal bond with Nigel Farage, the former leader of the anti-Europe, right-wing U.K. Independence Party.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/video/world/conservatives-lose-majority-in-british-parliament-calls-for-may-to-resign/2017/06/09/e0352cd2-4cdd-11e7-987c-42ab5745db2e_video.html

There is little possibility of warm personal ties developing between Corbyn and Trump. While May has been keen to present herself as one of the U.S. president’s key allies, the Labour leader has criticized Trump frequently. “Donald Trump should not be coming to the U.K.,” he said in February.

But the frustration with political norms that helped Trump in the United States is certainly evident in Britain, too. Page pointed to the Ipsos Global Trends survey, which compares the attitudes of select countries, including Britain and the United States, on politics and social changes. The survey found last year that more than three-quarters of Brits and Americans believed that the economy was rigged to favor the rich and powerful. A slightly lower percentage thought the government does not prioritize their concerns and the concerns of those like them.

British exit polls don’t collect the same complicated data that their U.S. peers do, so a full postmortem on how this anti-elite sentiment may have helped Corbyn isn’t available yet. But there are some hints in pre-election polls. Chris Curtis, a political researcher with YouGov, noted that in the final poll conducted this week, 58 percent of Labour supporters suggested that health care was the most important issue facing Britain, compared with 27 percent of Conservative supporters. May was widely accused of being out of touch after telling a nurse that her lack of pay raises was because there was no “magic money tree.”

In clear contrast to Trump, who received support from significant numbers of older voters, under Corbyn Labour is believed to have found more younger supporters — in part because of dramatic promises such as Corbyn’s pledge to abolish tuition fees at British universities. Registered-voter turnout is reported to have risen to 69 percent for this election. “We believe it will have rose proportionally among the young,” said Page, adding that most of these young voters are likely to have gone to Corbyn.

Where once polls missed right-wing voters, now they ran the risk of missing younger left-leaning voters, Page said. Many of these voters were frustrated by the past seven years of Conservative rule. Britain was once politically divided by its class system, he added, but “now we are a country divided by generations.” Another factor was that after years of political fragmentation, Britain appears to be returning to a two-party system — meaning a distinctly left-wing Labour may be regaining some voters who began supporting the more centrist Liberal Democrats a little over a decade ago.

The biggest similarity between Corbyn and Trump may not have been their campaigns or their support, but their opponents. In the United States, some analysts criticized Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton for running a lackluster and arrogant campaign against her underestimated, upstart rival. In Britain, much of Corbyn’s success is being attributed to May’s failures.

“People went into this election with a very strong impression of Theresa May,” Curtis said, “then she ran a campaign that really went against her chief strengths.” Instead of offering an impression of “strong and stable” leadership, May appeared “weak and wobbly” on the campaign trail. That failure may have helped the initially unpopular Corbyn with the “fastest and most incredible shift we’ve seen since YouGov started polling,” Curtis said.

More on WorldViews

After last year’s Brexit vote, younger Britons look to turn the tide

WASHINGTON — So what’s next for James Comey?

The former FBI director boldly challenged the president who fired him, accused the Trump administration of lying and supplied material that could be used to build a case against President Donald Trump.

But after stepping away from the Capitol Hill spotlight, where he’s always seemed comfortable, the 56-year-old veteran lawman now confronts the same question long faced by Washington officials after their government service.

His dry quip at a riveting Senate hearing that he was “between opportunities” vastly understates the career prospects now available to him — not to mention potential benefits from the public’s fascination with a man who has commanded respect while drawing outrage from both political parties.

Comey was pilloried for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, yet is now seen as a critical cog in the inquiry into possible connections between Russia and the Trump campaign. He may be called upon to provide more detail about his interactions with Trump, which he documented in a series of memos, even as he turns attention to potential opportunities in law, corporate work or perhaps even politics.

“There’s some jobs where the controversy would not be a benefit, but that’s why I see him ending up in a place where he can be himself,” said Evan Barr, a former federal prosecutor in New York City who worked under Comey in the U.S. attorney’s office. “If he were the president of a college or an important think tank, he could pursue the issues that mean the most to him and not be worried about trying to make anyone happy.”

Comey is unlikely to play any sort of direct role in the investigation now led by special counsel Robert Mueller, his predecessor as FBI director. But he almost certainly would avail himself as a witness to Mueller in any obstruction of justice investigation centered on his firing, or to further discuss requests he received from Trump that he interpreted as directives.

Comey’s carefully crafted memos are laden with contemporaneously recorded details and verbatim quotes that could easily lay down a path for investigators, and already have been turned over to Mueller. In one note, Comey says Trump cleared the room before encouraging Comey to end an investigation into Trump’s national security adviser, Michael Flynn.

Comey’s decision to share with reporters, through an intermediary, details from those conversations, and his insistence on testifying in public attest to his determination to confront the president head-on.

“I do think he is unquestionably, if this thing goes anywhere, one of the star witnesses,” said Robert Anderson, a retired FBI executive assistant director. “It really comes down to his testimony, in some avenues.”

Career options are generally plentiful for departing FBI leaders and attorneys general. Both Mueller and former Attorney General Eric Holder, for instance, took jobs with prestigious law firms after leaving public service.

But few if any have as public a profile as Comey or have generated such intense feelings.

Even Democrats who disagree with his firing remain stung by his revival of the Clinton email investigation days before the November election.

Republicans, pleased some seven months ago but who support Trump, may concur with the president’s assessment of Comey as a “showboat.”

And companies that do business with the government might find it risky to bring aboard someone who’s so publicly at odds with the current administration.

Comey’s name over the years has been floated in politics, though it’s not clear the former Republican — now an independent — has any interest.

Educated at William Mary University, where he wrote a senior thesis on a 20th century theologian, Comey went on to law school at the University of Chicago. The bulk of his work has been in government, with the exception of private practice legal work in Virginia early in his career, lucrative general counsel stints at defense contractor Lockheed Martin and a Connecticut hedge fund, and a teaching job at Columbia University.

He was the U.S. attorney in Manhattan who in 2003 charged Martha Stewart with obstructing justice in a stock trade investigation. He then became deputy attorney general, the No. 2 spot at the Justice Department, where he famously faced down fellow Bush administration officials over a surveillance program authorization. In 2013, he was sworn in as FBI director, a job he’s called the honor of his life.

Friends and colleagues say the father of five reveled in his public service.

“Anyone who has ever worked with Jim as far as I know, certainly speaking for myself, holds him in incredibly high esteem,” said Sharon McCarthy, who worked for him at the U.S. attorney’s office. “You’d be working late, he’d have a Coke in his hand and he’d come in, sit down, put his feet on your desk and start talking,”

Though Comey joked at a Senate hearing one week before his May 9 firing that he perhaps regretted picking up the phone when he was recruited for the FBI job while living comfortably in Connecticut, he also was known to pepper speeches with cracks about the “soulless” private sector.

He’d urge young audiences to imagine asking themselves on their death beds who they would want to have been, saying he hoped everyone’s answer would be that they tried to help others.

His own law firm life, he’d say, was lacking despite the matching furniture, parking space and Colonial-style home that accompanied the job.

“You do not make much money working for the FBI. You will not get famous working for the FBI. But you will be rich beyond belief if you look at it from (the public service) vantage point,” he has said.

One other question for Comey regardless of his next job will be how much he chooses, either directly or through intermediaries, to respond to allegations from Trump or Republicans rallying to the president’s defense. On Friday, Trump strongly suggested Comey had lied about their encounters and accused him of being a “leaker.”

“In the days to come,” Comey friend Ben Wittes wrote on his Lawfare blog, “we’re going to see a full-court press against Comey; indeed it is already well under way.”

___

Follow Eric Tucker on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerA:

Copyright 2017 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

LONDON — On the day after British voters delivered an astonishing repudiation of Prime Minister Theresa May at the very moment that she had expected to be her crowning glory, she tried to go on as though nothing much had changed. 

She would stay on as prime minister. She would keep her cabinet’s elite circle. Her plans for Brexit would go forward. 

“That’s what people voted for last June,” she announced defiantly outside 10 Downing Street after meeting with Queen Elizabeth II to discuss her new government. “That’s what we’ll deliver. Now let’s get to work.”

But beneath the bravado was a creeping reality: A year after choosing to get out of the European Union, voters had stunned the establishment once more. In the process, they may have thrust a dagger through the heart of a young premiership that only days ago had looked to be on the verge of achieving power of Thatcheresque proportions.

“It’s not clear to me that Theresa May is going to survive the next few days,” said Ian Kearns, co-founder of the European Leadership Network, a London-based think tank. “The level of damage that she’s done to her own brand is immense. The rebellion against her is just getting started.” 

At the least, Kearns and other observers said Friday, May will have to thoroughly rethink her plans for Brexit, only days before critical talks with the E.U. are due to launch. An uncompromising demand for a hard break from Europe may have to be downgraded to a far more modest rupture, Kearns said, perhaps one that does not look much like an exit at all.

Outwardly, May showed no signs of yielding to that pressure Friday. Just hours after her voice broke as she offered her first, shaky 3 a.m. response to an election that would end with her Conservative Party losing its majority in Parliament, she was grim-faced and joyless as she stood in the midday sun in front of her Downing Street offices and announced she would stay on as prime minister. 

“I will now form a government — a government that can provide certainty and lead Britain forward at this critical time for our country,” she said. 

[How the Conservatives could cobble together a governing coalition]

Not once did she mention the election, which she had gambled would give her enhanced powers but instead left her grievously wounded.

Behind the scenes, members of her party were discussing whether to keep her — with some concluding that, sooner or later, she would have to go. Some were taking their case public.

“I don’t believe personally that Theresa May will stay as our prime minister indefinitely,” Heidi Allen, a Tory member of Parliament, told LBC radio. “In my view, it may well be just a period of transition.”

With murmurs of a party coup building, May sought to buy herself time. She reappointed Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, Chancellor of the Exchequer Philip Hammond and other top ministers — several of whom are potential plotters and would-be replacements if she is deposed. 

She also promised there would be no delays in negotiations with the E.U., which are scheduled to begin June 19.

“What the country needs more than ever is certainty,” she said. 

But that was one thing Britain clearly lacked. 

The results from Thursday’s vote did not create any immediate path for the country to retreat from the Brexit brink. But the outcome instantly complicated — if not scuttled altogether — May’s meticulously laid strategy for getting out of the E.U., while also heightening doubts that she can reach a deal with European leaders over the next two years.

[Another item for the history books: More women than ever were just elected]

Without an agreement, Britain would crash out of the bloc and face giving up all the privileges of membership. Some lawmakers have pushed for Parliament to be allowed an emergency brake that would keep the country in should the talks fail.

At least, May could be forced to rethink her objectives in the negotiations, perhaps pushing for a softer break than the one she had sold to the public this spring.

Late Friday, May suggested she could be considering a course change, telling broadcasters that she would take time to “reflect” on an election that left her authority in tatters and tipped the scales in favor of her political opponents, including the once-hapless far-left Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn.

Final results in every district nationwide put the Conservatives at 318 seats — eight short of what they would need for a working majority in the 650-member Parliament and well down from the 331 they won just two years ago.

The Labour Party won 262 seats — an unexpected gain of dozens of seats under Corbyn. 

For May, those results were precisely the opposite of what she had hoped. May called the snap election seeking to strengthen her hand in the E.U. negotiations and to further sideline her political critics.

But with her slender majority having vanished overnight, May was put in the humiliating position of having to woo Northern Ireland’s right-wing Democratic Unionist Party — with 10 seats it is Parliament’s fifth-largest — into a deal just to have any hope of mustering the majority needed to keep the Tories in power.

[How a party from Northern Ireland could save May]

Even that could prove difficult. May said outside 10 Downing Street that the DUP would back her government.

But a deal is not yet sealed. The leader of the Democratic Unionists, Arlene Foster, said Friday afternoon that talks were still underway.

When asked whether May would be able to remain as prime minister, Foster told the BBC on Friday that she was unsure, adding, “I think it will be difficult.”

Foster’s party is likely to strike a tough bargain with the Tories. The Democratic Unionists backed leaving the E.U. but have opposed elements of May’s line in the divorce proceedings — especially provisions that could affect trade and movement on either side of the border separating Northern Ireland from the Republic of Ireland.

The political wreckage of Thursday’s vote also included Paul Nuttall, who stepped down as leader of the U.K. Independence Party. The anti-immigration party had led the charge for Brexit, but its support cratered this year: It won just 2 percent of the vote, compared with 13 percent in 2015.

Scottish nationalists — seeking a boost ahead of an expected second independence referendum — were also dealt a debilitating setback that raised questions about whether the referendum plans will be scrapped.

But the election’s biggest loser was undoubtedly the woman who had decided to call it: May.

[Corbyn’s Labour Party may be No. 2 but still won big in British elections]

The loss was widely interpreted in Britain as a personal repudiation of a politician who seemed to have charmed the country only months ago with her vow to be a “bloody difficult woman” in exit negotiations with her E.U. counterparts. 

Now it is unclear whether she will even make it to the negotiating table when talks begin.

May has vowed a hard break with the bloc, one that leaves Britain outside the single market, the customs union and the European Court of Justice. But she has also promised to deliver a free-trade deal that would preserve the best elements of membership without many of the onerous burdens.

European leaders have insisted that such a sweetheart arrangement is not possible.

On Friday, continental leaders expressed fresh frustration with the latest twist in Britain’s drama-laden departure. 

European Council President Donald Tusk responded to the vote by saying there was “no time to lose” to start the talks, so they can be finished by the spring of 2019.

The E.U. foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, complained that “we still don’t know the British position in the negotiations on Brexit.”

Kearns, of the European Leadership Network, said May’s best hope for keeping her job would be to “bin the entire approach she’s taken so far to Brexit and go back to the drawing board.” 

Instead of the clean break from Europe she’s sought, Kearns said, May would find cross-party support for a softer separation that leaves Britain formally outside the E.U. but with many of the same attachments that define its relationship to the bloc today. 

But without that sort of pivot, he said, May’s time in power is probably running out. 

“If she tries to stick with the same approach, her own party will remove her,” Kearns said, “because they understand that her strategy is doomed to failure.”

Read more

After London, questions mount over approach to domestic extremist groups

With the center all but vanished, Britain now as polarized as the U.S.

Today’s coverage from Post correspondents around the world

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A defiant President Trump on Friday accused former FBI director James B. Comey of committing perjury in his blockbuster Senate testimony and said he was willing to share his version of events under oath with the special counsel overseeing the expanding Russia investigation.

Trump emphatically declared his innocence yet refused to solve a mystery of his own making by stating whether he has tapes of his one-on-one conversations with Comey. Any such recordings could prove which man’s account is accurate, but the president played coy — saying he would wait “a fairly short period of time” to tell the public whether any tapes exist, as he first suggested they might in May.

During a combative news conference in the Rose Garden of the White House, the president Comey’s testimony was politically motivated, contained falsehoods and failed to establish that Trump had colluded with Russians to win last year’s election or had obstructed justice in seeking to end the federal government’s probe.

“No collusion. No obstruction. He’s a leaker,” Trump said of Comey, adding: “We were very, very happy and, frankly, James Comey confirmed a lot of what I said. And some of the things that he said just weren’t true.”

[Analysis: Trump thinks he got ‘total vindication’ from Comey. Except he didn’t.]

Comey’s testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee painted a damning portrait of Trump’s character, and the president waited until Friday morning to break his silence — first in a 6:10 a.m. tweet declaring “total and complete vindication” and then in more detail at the afternoon news conference.

Comey — who testified that he had taken contemporaneous notes of all his conversations with Trump — said he believed the president had fired him because of the Russia probe, told “lies” about Comey’s record at the bureau and sought to redirect the probe away from former national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Trump and his aides and allies followed a two-pronged rebuttal strategy: They hung onto snippets of Comey’s testimony as categorical evidence of Trump’s innocence while using other elements to try to impugn the former FBI director’s credibility.

The president, who followed the advice of his lawyers to refrain from commenting Thursday, was characteristically pugnacious in his presentation Friday and opted mostly to deliver broadsides rather than address the details of Comey’s testimony.

Jonathan Karl of ABC News drilled down on a couple of key facts, however, beginning with Comey’s statement that Trump had told him that he hoped he would let the Flynn investigation go. Trump replied three times, “I didn’t say that.”

Regarding Comey’s assertion that Trump had asked him during a one-on-one dinner in the White House to pledge his loyalty, the president said, “I hardly know the man. I’m not going to say, ‘I want you to pledge allegiance.’ Who would do that?”

Karl pointed out to Trump that Comey had made these statements under oath and asked the president — who has a long and well-documented history of telling falsehoods — whether he would be willing to provide his version of events under oath.

“One hundred percent,” Trump said.

Karl also asked if he was willing to speak about the issue with Robert S. Mueller III, the former FBI director who is now leading the Russia investigation as special counsel. Trump said he would.

“I would be glad to tell him exactly what I just told you,” Trump said.

Just as his personal lawyer and surrogates had on Thursday, Trump branded Comey a “leaker” on Friday for revealing in his testimony that he had asked a friend to pass along personal notes of Comey’s conversations with Trump to a reporter, with the aim of prompting the appointment of a special counsel. The Justice Department later appointed Mueller as special counsel.

Trump wrote in his Friday morning tweet, “WOW, Comey is a leaker!” And he repeated the charge at the Rose Garden news conference, telling reporters, “He’s a leaker.”

The term leaker is typically used to refer to a government employee who gives classified documents or state secrets to the news media. The case is different with Comey, a former government employee sharing personal notes and recollections that are not classified.

[James Comey admitted to authorizing a leak. That’s extraordinary.]

Still, Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s personal lawyer, was preparing to file a complaint early next week over Comey’s testimony to the Justice Department’s Inspector General’s Office and the Senate Judiciary Committee, according to a person close to the legal team.

A spokesman for the Justice Department Inspector General declined to comment.

On Thursday, Kasowitz alleged in his statement to reporters that Comey “unilaterally and surreptitiously made unauthorized disclosures to the press of privileged communications with the president.”

Trump’s surrogates fanned out on television news shows to parrot the president’s charge that Comey improperly leaked information.

Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi (R) said on Fox News Channel, “I think we’re going to have to look at his basically employment contract with the FBI as to what he would keep confidential and what he would reveal. So, I think there has to be an investigation. Am I ready to say he committed a crime? No, not until we look into all this.”

Despite Trump’s declaration of “no obstruction,” Democrats on Capitol Hill raised the prospect that he may have obstructed justice, based on Comey’s testimony, and called for additional investigations.

Sen. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), a senior member of both the Intelligence and Judiciary committees, said in a statement, “I see firsthand the distinction between the legal and counterintelligence aspects presented by Director Comey’s testimony this week. It is my strong recommendation that the Judiciary Committee investigate all issues that raise a question of obstruction of justice.”

Reps. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and Mike Conaway (R-Texas), who are investigating the Russia issue on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, sent a letter to White House counsel Donald F. McGahn asking whether the White House has any recordings or memoranda of Trump’s conversations with Comey, or whether any have existed in the past. They asked the White House to produce them to the committee by June 23.

Schiff and Conaway also sent a letter to Comey requesting he share any notes or memoranda in his possession about his talks with Trump.

[Behind Trump’s temporary silence: Why the counterpuncher let others do the punching]

Trump held his news conference alongside the visiting president of Romania, Klaus Iohannis, who lavished praise on his American host.

The visit came after Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son who helps run the family’s real estate companies while his father is in office, reportedly traveled to Romania in mid-May for a hunting and sightseeing trip. A Trump Organization spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment about Trump Jr.’s travels to Romania.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded definitively that Russia meddled in the 2016 presidential election to try to influence its outcome in Trump’s favor. But in his Rose Garden remarks, Trump repeated his claim that the probe into possible collusion between his campaign and Russia is merely the creation of his political opponents.

“That was an excuse by the Democrats who lost an election that some people think they shouldn’t have lost, because it’s almost impossible for the Democrats to lose the Electoral College, as you know,” Trump said. “You have to run up the whole East Coast and you have to win everything as a Republican, and that’s just what we did.”

In fact, Trump lost most of the states on the Eastern seaboard (he carried only Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and a portion of Maine). He won his electoral college majority by carrying a number of hotly-contested states in the industrial Midwest, including Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Wisconsin.