“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.

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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.”

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