The Canary caught up with Jeremy Corbyn at the launch party of Southport Community Independents, one of numerous locally-rooted and locally-focused groups that could eventually become the constituent parts of a new national party of the left.
Jeremy Corbyn: “the corporate power grab is the most fundamental question”
Jeremy Corbyn told the Canary that he’s:
disappointed in the way the government has continued the economic inequalities they inherited from the Tories, and doubly disappointed by last Monday’s announcement that they’re putting defence spending up to another £13bn a year and looking for more arms expenditure when we should be looking for a peaceful, sustainable world.
He also stressed that:
The question about the corporate power grab is the most fundamental question there is. What we have is global corporations, a very small number of them, have massive incredible power, far greater power than almost any national government anywhere.
So, they are controlling what is happening. And in the USA, you see it boldly and blatantly there. Look at the billionaires sitting behind Trump on his inauguration platform, look at the billionaires around his cabinet, and we see what is going on in the USA.
But also, look at the corporatisation of British politics, the huge business donations to both the major parties in this country. And look at the effects of that on our political system.
Here, he’s referring in part to the way prime minister Keir Starmer’s top team is in the pockets of warmongering lobbyists, having received £4m from just one hedge fund standing to profit from Israel’s genocide in Gaza, which Starmer has supported.
Corbyn also called for accountability over the British government’s steadfast support of Israel’s wanted war criminals, saying:
I firmly believe that those that have supplied the weapons to Israel that have occasioned the deaths of more than 60,000 people in Gaza are themselves culpable in supplying weapons, knowing how they were gonna be used and knowing what the effect would be, knowing that some of them were gonna target schools and hospitals, knowing they were gonna kill children.
‘The regenerating left must be rooted within the community’
Jeremy Corbyn noted that:
the political movement regenerating is one that’s inevitably and required to be rooted within the community, hence the accountability… This doesn’t make life easy for elected politicians. It is making them accountable…
when I was leader of the Labour Party… the biggest opposition I had… from the Labour Party bureaucracy was the development of community organisers and a community organising operation by the party. Because I do believe that politics is about what you’re demanding in your own community, and achieve.
He also suggested that community engagement is just as important, or even moreso, than funding, explaining that in his election victory as an independent in 2024:
We won because we had a large number of people helping, because we knocked on a lot of doors, and also I’ve been there a very long time. All of those factors were a plus. We didn’t win it through money. We didn’t win it through the influence of the mainstream media…
Community groups feeling strong and feeling confident are what win.
Jeremy Corbyn: the importance of inclusivity and unity
As the Canary has reported previously, Britain’s population is ageing and we have big skills shortages, largely because successive governments have prioritised lining the pockets of the rich over invest appropriately in the future. As a result, we absolutely need immigration to fill vacancies in key areas like health and care.
In order to put that message across and resist the far right’s message of blaming immigrants for Britain’s problems, Jeremy Corbyn said:
The best response is this. Did immigrants underfund the National Health Service? Did the migrant community underfund education? Did the migrant community bring in a two-child benefit cap? Did the migrant community underfund disability benefits? We all know the answer: no, no, no, no.
And responding to concerns about the representation of disabled people in the resurgent left – such as the Canary recently highlighted with the We Demand Change conference – he insisted that:
those with disabilities have to be there and have to be represented there and have to have the facilities to be there. That should apply to every meeting, every event, all the time, anywhere.
Watch our full conversation with Jeremy Corbyn:
Sean Halsall: After less than a year, people already see Starmer for what he is
Southport Community Independents and its leader Sean Halsall have the backing of Collective, which is aiming to “drive the formation of a new, mass-membership political party of the left”, and of Assemble, whose focus is to put ordinary people at the heart of politics via local assemblies.
Halsall told the Canary that the level of participation at the launch party:
speaks to even how far we’ve come away from democratic structures in a year. With Keir Starmer being elected, people probably falsely had hope that things would change. But we’ve just seen anti-democratic, authoritarian stuff from him. We’ve seen the ripping up of his pledges that he made when he became leader, a manifesto built on sand – there’s nothing in there that’s tangible.
He also criticised the Labour government for pandering to the far right, insisting:
If you wanna try and win an election and you’re parroting far-right sentiment, people are gonna trust the far right with that – if you allow the battleground to become their battleground, you can’t win on that…
There’s not a person in this country who’s benefited from however many thousands of people we’ve deported. What we would benefit from is a functioning healthcare system, schools that aren’t crumbling at the seams, and people not having to rely on foodbanks.
Watch our full conversation with Sean Halsall below:
Featured image via the Canary
