The Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who has spent the past three years repositioning the party firmly to the left of the version fashioned by former Prime Minister Tony Blair, thinks voters are tired of the endless bickering over Brexit and want someone to address their day-to-day concerns.
So on Wednesday, at the party’s annual conference, Corbyn sought to articulate an unashamedly socialist program that he believes will propel him to Downing Street in the event that the beleaguered government of Prime Minister Theresa May collapses.
Issuing a rallying cry to voters disillusioned by a decade of austerity since the financial crash of 2008, he called for fundamental reform of a “broken economic system” and an end to “greed-is-good” capitalism.
In his speech, Corbyn attacked the “political and corporate establishment” and a “deregulated” financial system, doubling down on a number of policies detailed in Labour’s manifesto ahead of last year’s general election, which saw them win 40% of the vote and deny Theresa May’s Conservatives a parliamentary majority.
The Labour leadership believes this message will resonate in areas of the UK that voted “Leave” in the Brexit referendum of 2016. But not all the party agrees: the rank-and-file membership, which swept Corbyn into the top spot after years on the leftwing fringes of the party, are resolute supporters of Britain’s membership of the European Union.
Those divisions were laid bare on Tuesday when delegates in Liverpool forced a shift in the party’s position on a second referendum, voting for a policy that puts a new vote on the table in the event that May fails to get a Brexit deal through the UK Parliament.
But on Wednesday, Corbyn sought to play down the divisions on Brexit, concentrating instead on appealing to the economic concerns of voters.
Offering a left-wing alternative to the populism of the far right — which is dragging the political agenda rightwards across much of Europe — Corbyn echoed the demands of left-wing and socialist movements around the world, including the Democratic Socialists in the US, in his call for wealth redistribution and a fairer economic system, designed “for the many, not the few.”
“Ten years ago this month, the whole edifice of greed-is-good, deregulated financial capitalism, lauded for a generation as the only way to run a modern economy, came crashing to earth, with devastating consequences for millions of people,” Corbyn said.
“But instead of making essential changes to a broken economic system, the political and corporate establishment strained every sinew to bail out and prop up the system that led to the crash in the first place.”
Pointing to the strong result for Labour in last year’s snap election — called by May in the hope of winning a landslide to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations — Corbyn argued that his party’s “radical plan to rebuild and transform Britain” is the answer.
The creation of more than 400,000 new jobs in the renewable energy sector — a “green jobs revolution” — is part of that plan.
“There is no bigger threat facing humanity than climate change,” Corbyn said. “We must lead by example.”
He also backed a series of proposals made by Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell in a speech on Monday, including a plan to force all large firms to give their employees a share of the business, and a pledge to nationalize the rail and mail industries, and utilities including water and electricity.
Left-wing politics alive and well?
Labour is hopeful that, in the event of a general election, voters will turn away from the Conservatives. Despite deep internal divisions over Brexit, the party’s leftward shift and accusations of antisemitism, recent polling suggests support for Labour remains steady.
The party is not the only one to gather support while campaigning on a staunchly left-wing, even socialist, agenda.
The growth of Corbyn’s reinvented, left-wing Labour party mirrored the rise of Bernie Sanders in the US and the later emergence of the Democratic Socialists.
“Too many people run away from … the grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality that exist in the United States, that exist in the UK, and exist all over the world,” he said, adding that “globalization has left far too many people behind.”
And despite the undeniable growth of far-right parties across much of Europe, a number of left-wing or socialist parties have also been making gains.
The relative successes of Podemos in Spain, Syriza in Greece, Die Linke in Germany and Melenchon’s insurgent movement in France in last year’s French presidential election have shown how left-wing politics can counteract the rise of the right.
Source : Nbcnewyork
