Hard-left candidate favorite for Labour Party leadership

Britain's opposition Labour Party sent out its ballot papers on Friday, beginning its contest to select the party's next leader. Ex-chief Ed Miliband resigned in the wake of the party's election defeat last May.

Jeremy Corbyn, a veteran lawmaker significantly left of center, has emerged as a surprise favorite, although the results of the election, for which some 600,000 party members and supporters are eligible to vote, will not be announced until September 12.

The 66-year-old, who has been a member of parliament since 1983, has attracted significant grassroots support. His backers have adopted the slogan "Jez We Can," to harken back to Barack Obama's 2008 US presidential campaign phrase.

Politically, however, Corbyn is much farther left than Obama and some Labour figures are worried that he could not carry an election in a nation where the battle for power between parties is often fought on center ground.

'Eyes shut,' says Blair

"The party is walking eyes shut, arms outstretched, over the cliff's edge to the jagged rocks below," wrote former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair in Thursday's edition of The Guardian newspaper.

Corbyn was long opposed to economic austerity and to British involvement in the US-led 2003 Iraq War, which created long-lasting unpopularity for Blair.

Labour needs Scotland

On Friday, Corbyn himself was preparing for sold-out campaign rallies in Edinburgh and Glasgow, hoping to bolster Labour support after its voters abandoned it in droves in May to back the Scottish National Party (SNP).

"Labour cannot win Scotland without change; and Labour cannot have a path back to power that fails to speak to Scotland," the veteran socialist said in a statement.

Others more centrist

His three competitors are more centrist in their outlook: Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper are former ministers in the governments of Blair and Gordon Brown. The third rival, Liz Kendall, is a backbench parliamentarian who has voiced her support for an early referendum over Britain's place in the EU, while also calling on the Labour Party to lead the Yes to Europe campaign.

The country's two main left-leaning newspapers, the Daily Mirror and The Guardian, came out on Friday in favor of Burnham and Cooper, respectively. The Guardian conceded though that the three mainstream candidates "failed to inspire."

es/ipj (AFP, Reuters)