Jeremy Corbyn for Change, for Hope!

This is the speech I would have made in support of Jeremy Corbyn at Vauxhall CLP’s nomination meeting on 28 June 2016 if I had been called to speak. Seems a pity to let it go to waste. 

It’s clear from the referendum result that the country is split down the middle – and very dangerously split.

Before allocating blame, let’s remember it was a Tory referendum and that 58% of Tories voted Leave compared with just 37% of Labour voters.

But it’s that 37% we need to worry about, because the areas and demographics where they are concentrated are UKIP target areas and we cannot even begin to build the massive coalition of interests we must build – and build quickly – to win the next General Election without them.

This Leadership election needs to start with the policies which will ensure the 37% – and of course millions more – support Labour. It has to be about who can give HOPE that their lives can and will CHANGE. And change for the better.

The alienation of these areas is deep rooted – it hasn’t just materialised since the 2008 crash. It has its roots in the deindustrialisation of the 80s and the globalisation of the 90s, in the neoliberal policies which were embedded under Thatcher and followed on through the New Labour years. Policies based on laissez faire economics, a small state, the transfer of public assets to the private sector.

We see its effects in the rise of inequality, the destruction of the NHS through cuts, privatisation and PFI, the failure to build public housing, the disintegration of our community education system and our universities, the shocking employment practices which have been allowed to spread, and the drip drip drip attacks on benefit claimants, people with disabilities and migrants. And now we see its effects in the spike in hate crime since the referendum legitimised it.

From November the benefit cap will cut housing benefit to families by a massive £75 per week. Half a million children could face eviction in the next year.

Do you think a candidate who supports such a measure because it’s ‘popular’ can inspire HOPE?

Do you think a candidate who will be perceived – whether it’s true or not – as continuity New Labour, another Westminster suit, can inspire HOPE?

I’m told Citizen Smith has borrowed a load of new policies and that he’s now following the Marxist doctrine of ‘these are my policies, if you don’t like them, I have others…..’

Of course it’s not just that 37% we need to inspire. But without them we haven’t got a chance. And in any case we have a moral duty to change lives for the better – it is what Labour has to be about.

Jeremy doesn’t just talk opposition to neoliberalism and austerity when it suits him – he means it. And people know that. He has shifted Labour’s policies over the past year away from austerity and benefit cuts, and different economic and social policies are being developed. We should all be supporting that, helping it along, having our say.

There’s a lot of talented people in the Party and we need to work together FOR CHANGE, FOR HOPE – and Jeremy Corbyn is the Leader who can deliver that CHANGE, that HOPE.