Jeremy Corbyn
Time for change
JEREMY CORBYN argues that there are three reasons for Labour's dismal showing in last week's elections.
THIS week's papers have carried a number of stories detailing how Chancellor Gordon Brown will change government policies as soon as he becomes prime minister.
While much of the coverage has been interesting, it shows supreme arrogance on the part of Brown, his friends and the vast majority of the British media, all of which refuse to acknowledge that there is another very credible candidate standing for the leadership - John McDonnell.
On the whole, he has been denied media exposure, thanks to the self-opinionated press, despite being backed by a substantial number of Labour MPs and a very large number of trade union and Labour Party members.
McDonnell has this degree of support because he represents the traditions of the labour movement and he provides credible coherent answers to the problems faced by ordinary working people in their daily lives in modern Britain.
Last Thursday, Labour received a drubbing in elections for English local government, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament.
After 10 years in government, some very good things have been achieved by Labour - particularly, the minimum wage, the Human Rights Act, the Freedom of Information Act and significant investments in health and education.
But the continuous loss of Labour support since 2001 has been caused by three factors.
First, the government's arrogant pursuit of anti-libertarian policies on rights and justice that are designed to appeal to the Daily Mail editorial department.
Second, huge investment in health and education has been severely damaged by the use of private finance to build new hospitals and schools and the reintroduction of the discredited Tory internal market in the health service and local government. Under new Labour, the most profitable areas of investment for privateers have been public services, which ought to be provided by public employees, not agencies or contractors.
The third big factor is Blair's obsession with "standing shoulder to shoulder" with George W Bush on Iraq and the Middle East.
Brown is apparently telling journalists privately that he wants much more direct engagement with Iran and wishes to rapidly promote a Middle East peace settlement. At the same time, even more privately, he has been telling Labour Friends of Israel that he fully supports Israel.
While a change in policy towards the Middle East would be very welcome, as would the withdrawal of British forces from Iraq, Brown knows all too well that he has publicly supported these policies ever since 2001 and, indeed, on one occasion, he even stated that there was an unlimited budget for the Iraq war.
Brown is apparently also concerned - as should any human being be - about NHS job losses and the expansion of the private health care industry in Britain. This new-found concern about the private sector undermining the health services contradicts the reality that this stems directly from the private finance initiative contracts which the Treasury has promoted ever since Brown became Chancellor.
Blair will apparently announce a timetable for his own departure on Thursday. It should mark the start of an intense and serious debate across the labour movement about how to win back the support of those who have happily voted Labour in the past and halt a Tory victory under David Cameron.
For, despite Cameron's urbane metropolitan liberal pastiche, he is an extreme free-marketeer in the Thatcher mould and would follow a neoconservative policy in world affairs.
I hope that enough Labour MPs recognise the need for party members to have a role in choosing the party leadership by ensuring that McDonnell receives the 45 nominations that he needs to be a candidate.
The real face of modern slavery RADIO phone-ins on Monday night were dominated by hostile callers following extensive reporting of the Strangers into Citizens march after a Westminster Cathedram mass.
The British economy has done extremely well as a result of exploiting undocumented people, who, in turn, have been denied the protection of the national miniumum wage, legal rights of job security or access to public services.
The London march followed demonstrations by Latin American people living in the US and demands for rights in other European countries.
Survival is extremely difficult for people living in indebted poor countries across the world. Victims of political and social oppression are finding it increasingly hard to gain asylum in Western Europe.
The T&G and other trade unions are to be strongly commended for supporting the Strangers into Citizens project and using the May Day public holiday to rekindle the traditional spirit of the day.
It is very easy for governments and right-wing commentators to use anti-immigration sentiment as a lever to maintain support, but the reality is that the whole of Western Europe does very well out of the skills and labour of people from the poorest countries in the world. It is high time that the slogan "every worker a legal worker" became a reality.
On Tuesday, former United Nations secretary general Kofi Annan visited Parliament to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the abolition of the slave trade.
This remains a truly remarkable point in history, although slavery continued in Britain and the colonies for another 30 years. And, while slavery is almost universally illegal officially, the discrimination and short-term contracts faced by the many poor people in the world who became migrant workers mean that they are, effectively, economic slaves.
It's time to be less self-congratulatory about the abolition of the slave trade 200 years ago and more concerned about human rights and dignity across the globe in the 21st century.
Jeremy Corbyn is Labour MP for Islington North. He can be contacted at corbynj@parliament.uk
