If Boris Johnson could, with a squint, be seen as Britain’s answer to Donald Trump, then Jeremy Corbyn – the opposition leader at heart of a post-Brexit revolt in the Labour party – is best explained in an American context by comparison to Bernie Sanders, writes the Guardian’s Washington bureau chief Dan Roberts.

To their supporters, both aging socialists represent the modern face of an anti-establishment uprising. With their focus on those forgotten by globalization, they may be drawing on the same resentment that fuels Trump and the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union, but purport to offer hope, not anti-immigrant hatred, as a response.



To their critics, particularly among Democratic and Labour party leaders, Corbyn and Sanders also share a dangerous stubborn streak. By refusing to compromise their beliefs, these cantankerous old class-warriors risk are splitting the progressive majority at a time when it needs to be unified against the xenophobic populism of the right.