Old Newscast: How Jeremy Corbyn Won The Labour Leadership 2015 (Part 1)
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 29 December 2025
⏱️ 31 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today’s Old Newscast is travelling all the way back to 2015: it’s the morning after the general election, and Ed Miliband resigns as leader of the Labour party.
Veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn entered the leadership contest with many doubting he would win the necessary 35 nominations from Labour MPs to make it on to the ballot. Three months later, on the 12th September 2015, he was elected as leader with almost 60% of the vote.
Adam is joined by two journalists who followed each twist and turn of the 2015 Labour leadership contest, Jane Merrick and Nick Watt, to revisit how the Corbyn campaign won.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, podcasts. |
| 0:06.8 | Jeremy Corbyn has won more than 50% of the votes casting his round, |
| 0:11.6 | and are therefore delighted to declare Jeremy Corbyn elected as leader of the Labour Party. |
| 0:28.8 | The 12th of September 2015, the day Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour Party. |
| 0:33.7 | At the start of the contest, he was a 200 to 1 outsider, according to some bookies, |
| 0:38.9 | but ended up with almost 60% of the vote of Labour members and registered supporters, |
| 0:43.7 | and thereby trouncing his rivals, Andy Burnham, Yvette Cooper and Liz Kendall. |
| 0:48.5 | We are going to look back at how Jeremy Corbyn went from a rank outsider to winning that contest in the next two episodes of Old Newscast. |
| 0:52.1 | And for those of you who don't know what old newscast is, this is where |
| 0:55.7 | we look back at some moments which have been turning points in recent history and talk to people |
| 0:59.9 | who either covered it as journalists or were involved in the events in some way. We have done |
| 1:04.9 | plenty episodes before, ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the expenses scandal in the |
| 1:09.7 | British Parliament. So to set the |
| 1:11.9 | scene for this set of old newscasts, Labour has just suffered a huge defeat in the 2015 general |
| 1:18.4 | election. Ed Miliband resigned the morning after and Labour was at a genuine crossroads, |
| 1:24.3 | agonising over which direction the party should go in. So how did Jeremy Corbyn |
| 1:29.5 | get on the ballot paper in the first place? How was he able to defy all expectations? That |
| 1:35.9 | will be the subject of the next two episodes of old newscast. Newscast from the BBC. |
| 1:42.3 | I didn't set out in life with any overwheeling ambition to do anything. |
| 1:46.6 | Oh, Jeremy Corbyn. Those colleagues who nominated me, MPs who nominated me, may not necessarily agree with me. |
| 1:54.6 | This is the, I think I'm right in saying, 83rd event we've done. |
| 1:59.4 | Jeremy Corbyn elected as leader of the Labour. |
... |
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