Jeremy Corbyn Re-Elected as UK Labour Leader Saturday Sep 24,2016

Jeremy Corbyn celebrates his victory following the announcement of the winner in the Labour leadership contest between him and Owen Smith at the ACC Liverpool. England Saturday Sept, 24, 2016.

Veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyn was re-elected head of Britain's Labour Party on Saturday Sep 24,2016, defeating a challenge to his year-old leadership to the delight of his grass-roots supporters and the despair of party centrists, who fear he will lead Labour into the political wilderness.

Jeremy Corbyn won almost 62 % of the more than 500,000 votes cast by Labour members and supporters. His challenger, Welsh lawmaker Owen Smith, got 38 % in a result announced at the party's conference in Liverpool, northwest England.

Jeremy Corbyn, a long-time back-bench lawmaker, was elected last year to lead Labour, which governed between 1997 and 2010 but has lost two successive general elections to the Conservatives.

Jeremy Corbyn has strong support among local party activists, but many Labour legislators believe his left-wing views are out of step with public opinion, and have tried to unseat him.

Accepting victory to a standing ovation from delegates, Jeremy Corbyn said he would work to unite the party.

"We have much more in common than that which divides us," he said. "As far as I'm concerned let's wipe that slate clean from today and get on with the work we've got to do as a party."

Jeremy Corbyn's margin of victory is larger than a year ago, but he heads a party that's a long way from defeating the governing Conservatives, and split about whether it values political principles over gaining power

For Corbyn supporters, it was a chance to repudiate the centrist "new Labour" vision of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who won three elections but became too cozy with big business for some tastes, and took Britain into the U.S.-led Iraq War.

Tens of thousands more new members have flocked to Labour since Corbyn was elected, many of them young and enthusiastic. Corbyn draws big crowds to rallies and meetings, and his supporters are a formidable force on social media.

Other Labour members, and most of the party's lawmakers, want power — and think Labour can't win it while Corbyn is in charge. They argue that his policies — including re-nationalization of the railways and unilateral nuclear disarmament — don't speak to ordinary voters.

Jeremy Corbyn is a lackluster performer in Parliament, and gave muted support to the European Union during this year's referendum campaign, a factor some think contributed to the "leave" victory.

After the referendum more than 170 of Labour's 230 MPs declared no-confidence in Corbyn, but he refused to resign, sparking Smith's leadership challenge.

His followers — dubbed Corbynistas — see Labour as a mass movement for social justice, similar to Spain's Podemos, rather than simply a machine for winning elections