Michael Foot for his rumpled appearance. A centrist faction of the party broke away in 1981 to form the SDP. Foot led Labour into the 1983 general election, when the party obtained its lowest share of the vote since the 1918 general election and the fewest parliamentary seats it had had at any time since before 1945. He resigned after the election, and was succeeded as leader by Neil Kinnock. Among the books he authored are "Guilty Men" (1940); "The Pen and the Sword" (1957), a biography of Jonathan Swift; and a biography of Aneurin Bevan. Foot was born in Lipson Terrace,
Labour Party leadership of Jeremy Corbyn November 2017, Corbyn whipped Labour MPs to vote with the Tories against an amendment by Labour MP Ian Murray that would have effectively kept the UK in the customs union. Corbyn said he welcomed Prime Minister Theresa May's proposal to seek an early general election in 2017. He said his party should support the government's move in the parliamentary vote. Earlier in the year, Corbyn had become the first opposition party leader since Michael Foot in 1982 to lose a by-election to an incumbent government, and at the time May called the snap election, Labour trailed the Conservative Party by