Vox Sentences: The next leader of Britain’s Labour Party makes Bernie Sanders look centrist

A socialist is about to lead Britain's Labour Party; Turkey's Kurdish insurgency flares up again; and the NYPD apologizes for its treatment of a black man.

TOP NEWS

New New Labour

Getty / Rob Stothard

• Jeremy Corbyn, an avowed and unreconstructed socialist, is poised to become the next leader of Britain's center-left Labour Party.

  [The Guardian / Jessica Elgot]

• Corbyn is something like Britain's Bernie Sanders: a career left-wing legislator (he's been in Parliament for 32 years) who never seemed interested in higher office until suddenly he felt the need to move his party leftward. Only Corbyn's far to Sanders' left.

  [The New Statesman / George Eaton]

• Hundreds of thousands of people — largely Corbyn supporters — joined the Labour Party just to vote for a new leader: the eligible voter rolls tripled to 550,000 people. Meanwhile, as of the night before voting closed, many longtime Labour Party members still hadn't received ballots.

  [The Guardian / Rowena Mason]

• But the Labour establishment isn't going to go gently. Up to a dozen members of the "shadow cabinet" (counterparts to the real Cabinet officials from the opposition party) are likely to resign if Corbyn wins.

  [The Telegraph / Ben Riley-Smith]

• Electing Corbyn could be seen as a rejection of the "New Labour" centrism of, say, Tony Blair in the 1990s. Tony Blair seems to see it that way.

  [The Times (UK) / Michael Savage and Lucy Fisher]

• But here's the thing: Labour just tried to move to the left in the election earlier this year, and it got trounced.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

The PKK took my baby away

Anadolu Agency / Ibrahim Suzer

• Violence in southeastern Turkey between the government and Kurdish separatists (the PKK) is flaring up again after a two-year ceasefire.

  [Atlantic Council / Aaron Stein]

• On Friday, PKK members attacked a group of Turkish policemen in a restaurant, wounding three and killing a waiter.

  [Reuters / Darren Butler, Jonny Hogg, and Ayla Jean Yackley]

• Turkey, for its part, has been bombing PKK positions within its own borders and occupying Kurdish cities. In the city of Cizre, an eight-day curfew has left residents unable to buy food or medicine.

  [BBC]

• The ceasefire ended in late July, when the PKK killed two Turkish police officers — supposedly in retaliation for an ISIS suicide bombing of a predominantly Kurdish town near Turkey's border with Syria.

  [Atlantic Council / Aaron Stein]

• The PKK blames the Turkish government for not stepping in to protect Kurds in Turkey and Syria against ISIS — stretching back to last summer, when ISIS laid siege to the city of Kobane.

  [Vox / Zack Beauchamp]

• To the contrary, the Turkish government has been flirting with the idea of sending its military to attack Kurds in northern Syria, who have more or less successfully seceded from the country (which Turkey sees as a bad precedent)

  [Daily Beast / Thomas Seibert]

"Extending courtesy to a public figure mistreated by the police is not enough"

Screenshot of NYPD video

• The New York Police Department released video footage of the violent arrest of former pro tennis player James Blake on Wednesday.

  [Ryan Ruggiero via Twitter]

• Blake was arrested during a credit-card fraud sting; apparently he was identified by a witness as the leader of the fraud ring.

  [CNN / Ralph Ellis, Shimon Prokupecz and Holly Yan]

• Somewhat unusually, both New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYPD have apologized for the arresting officer's conduct.

  [NY1 News]

• But Blake has officially rejected their apologies: "Extending courtesy to a public figure mistreated by the police is not enough...I am calling upon the City of New York to make a significant financial commitment to improving" police-community relations.

  [Ram Ramgopal via Twitter]

• The officer who arrested Blake is currently a defendant in two different pending federal civil-rights lawsuits regarding his use of force toward people of color.

  [BuzzFeed / Lindsey Adler and Nicolas Medina Mora]

MISCELLANEOUS

Serena Williams lost her shot at a calendar Grand Slam today, but is still the GOAT. [Vox / Caroline Framke]

• If you had "Rick Perry" in your fantasy-GOP-primary Survivor pool, you have officially lost.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• 14 years after 9/11, no one knows when the five men accused of plotting it will stand trial.

  [Yahoo News / Liz C. Goodwin]

• The Christian fashion store Altar'd State is huge business in the heartland. But they really don't want journalists reporting on them.

  [Racked / Stephie Grob Plante]

• What happens when a startup trying "to create a world where people work to make a life, not just a living" gets involved in a labor dispute with its own low-wage workers.

  [New York Times / David Gelles]

VERBATIM

"Either what is going on is a vast confusion of what constitutes capital, or it is theft from every single football player that plays this stupid game to enrich a coach, athletic director, and the university." [Every Day Should Be Saturday / Spencer Hall]

• "'UME is the leading company in emotion extension technology. At UME, we connect how you feel with your loved ones,' their website says."

  [Gizmodo / Rose Eveleth]

• "They were designed to be a place that nobody wants to be in."

  [Next City / Anna Clark]

• "This is still poor, benighted Earth, where people think digital watches and sexism are pretty neat ideas."

  [The Toast / Jess Zimmerman]

• "Neither my wife nor I have ever had a cellphone; there's just no bird that will fit inside your pocket and perform even the basic functions of a phone."

  [Something Awful / Zack Parsons]

WATCH THIS

• How the new NFL extra point rule could change football

  [Vox / Matt Moore]