Newspapers on both sides of the Atlantic reported this week that Jeremy Corbyn, the left-of-center leader of the United Kingdom’s opposition Labour Party, spent Christmas and the New Year in Mexico with his Mexican wife Laura Alvarez.
Social media posts suggest that – for the second Christmas in a row – Corbyn met with radical political firebrand Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, as well as other members of his left-wing Morena Party. (The two politicians also met up to exchange notes in December 2016, in Ciudad de Villahermosa, Tabasco.)
Lopez Obrador will run for the Mexican presidency for the third time in 2018. Many polls make him the frontrunner, although the official campaign won’t begin until February.
With U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May’s Conservative government holding onto power in Parliament by a wafer-thin margin, another general election is a distinct possibility in 2018. Corbyn currently leads May in the polls, showing that he has consolidated the momentum the Labour Party gained in the June 2017 election that saw May loose her overall parliamentary majority.
The U.K.’s Sun newspaper reported Thursday that in a social media post, Morena’s Irma Eréndira Sandoval wrote: “In 2018 Mexico and U.K. will demonstrate (to) people that another government is possible.”
She continued: “A real luxury to meet today in Coyoacán with the future Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Jeremy Corbyn, a great friend of Mexico, democracy, justice, and Lopez Obrador.”
Last September, Corbyn hosted Lopez Obrador at the U.K. parliament during a trip the Morena leader made to several European capitals.