Roundup: Waiting game as counting starts in Labour leadership battle

Voting for a new leader among more than 600,000 members of Britain's Labour Party closed Wednesday.

Now a waiting game starts as counting of the votes starts ahead of an announcement on Saturday. The results will decide if Jeremy Corbyn, left-wing leader of the main opposition party, will be re-elected, or whether the hot seat will go to challenger Owen Smith.

Smith was one of 172 Labour MPs who backed a vote of no confidence in Corbyn in a chain of events that sparked the leadership challenge.

Corbyn was a relatively unknown backbench MP, representing the London constituency of Islington North, until last September when he became a last minute entrant to the leadership contest following the resignation of Ed Miliband.

Miliband had quit following a poor showing by his party in the 2015 general election which handed former prime minister David Cameron a clear majority after five years of a coalition government with the minority Liberal Democrats.

Ranked as an outsider, Corbyn swept to victory in last year's leadership election, gaining around 250,000 votes. His closest rival won 80,000 votes. It was a landslide result, never before seen in British politics.

Corbyn, who won backing from a rapidly growing campaign group, Momentum, is favorite to win the new leadership challenge. So convinced are the betting organisations of a Corbyn victory that a 100 U.S. dollar wager with one of the big bookmakers, will win you just a dollar in prize money.

According to media reports Wednesday, one party member who voted for Smith was Corbyn's ex-wife Jane Chapman.

One academic who has made a study of the rise of Momentum is political expert Dr Andrew Crines from the University of Liverpool.

He says Momentum was born out of Corbyn's decision to run for the Labour leadership.

"The group, which sat outside of the party, garnered its supporters from organisations and individuals which had campaigned against Labour in the preceding general election," he said.

Left Unity, the Green Party, and the remnants of the old Campaign for Labour Party Democracy group threw their weight behind Corbyn.

"They saw his leadership as an opportunity to reverse the direction the party had taken under (Labour leaders) Neil Kinnock, John Smith, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. His would be a leadership more likely to reflect their own political views," said Crines.

"Momentum is, at heart, a campaign to unite the left around the Labour Party. The response from moderates has been to establish counter-campaigns such as Open Labour, which aim to protect the gains Labour made during the years before Corbyn became leader," he added.

Political observers will now be pondering on various scenarios depending on the result of a contest at the heart of a civil war within Britain's second political party.

If Corbyn, with massive grass roots support, wins, will his estranged parliamentary Labour Party fall in line behind him? More than a dozen of his front bench team who resigned in the fall-out, have said they will return.

Many MPs want a breakaway parliamentary party as a rival to Corbyn. But one thing seems certain, whether Corbyn wins or loses, his loyal army of supporters and campaigners from Momentum are here to stay.

The result is to be announced in Liverpool on Saturday at the start of the party's annual conference. Whether it will be Corbyn or Smith making the key-note leader's speech next Tuesday is yet to be determined. Endit