https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/jeremy-corbyn-its-time-party-empower-people

With ‘Your Party’ holding its founding conference in Liverpool this weekend, JEREMY CORBYN speaks to Morning Star editor Ben Chacko about its potential, its priorities — and a few of its controversies too

JEREMY CORBYN says the Palestine solidarity movement is a game changer in British politics.

“The Palestine movement is absolutely huge. And like the movement against the Vietnam war of the 1960s, which had a huge impact on political thinking — the rather fossilised structure of both major parties started to disintegrate after that — it means things have to change.”

It’s one of the reasons he says the time is right for a new mass party of the left. “Your Party,” as it is provisionally known, has its founding conference this weekend.

“In my estimation at least two million people in Britain have done something about Palestine over the past 18 months — attend demonstrations, marches, meetings, sent emails, signed petitions.

“A lot of people are coming together on Palestine and at all the Palestine events I’ve been at there’s been a huge interest in the idea of a new party.”

Corbyn, meeting the Morning Star in his Westminster office, isn’t saying one issue would be enough to build a mass movement for change on — but the immense public anger at our Establishment’s complicity in a genocide is a galvanising moment.

One that comes at a time ripe for Labour to be challenged from the left.

“Labour has lost all appeal to the radical sections of the population.” And that, today, means a lot of people.

“Nobody really believes the left are going to be back in power in the Labour Party, because of the structural changes Starmer has brought in,” says Corbyn. Changes everyone knows are intended to prevent anything like Corbyn’s own 2015-20 leadership of the party happening ever again.

“Now is the time for a left party in the tradition of the labour movement. That is where I see myself. I am not leaving the labour movement. I am helping form a political party which will be part of the labour movement.

“We must challenge the ‘triopoly’ of the Tories, Labour and Lib Dems on political, social, environmental and economic thinking. They all believe in austerity, they all believe in market economics, they’re all running away from addressing the environmental crisis and on social justice issues.

“Labour had a ‘loveless landslide’ just over a year ago in the election. A spectacularly low vote for a party moving into government.” Corbyn points out that, while “we didn’t win either election, I fully appreciate that,” the highest Labour votes at general elections this century were both under his leadership, in 2017 and 2019. An important reminder that the idea socialist policies are unpopular at the ballot box is a media-manufactured myth.

Since coming to power Starmer’s government has been “disastrous. Maintaining the two-child benefit cap [finally lifted a day after we spoke], trying to take away the winter fuel allowance, attempting to remove personal independence payments from disabled people.”

On housing, he slams Labour’s refusal to take on the private rental sector or stand up to for-profit builders, who have a stranglehold on construction and resist efforts to include social and council housing in new builds.

He also ties the government’s decision to ramp up military spending to “effective cuts to every other area of public spending.” The government claims it’s increasing spending on the NHS, but he points out that two hospitals near him in north London are cutting spending by £20 million — and all over the country similar cuts are taking place across hospital trusts.

The increased military budget covers “a new generation of nuclear weapons and for the first time since the 1960s airborne nuclear bombs being stationed in Britain. There is no agenda for anything other than war.” And back to the trigger issue, Gaza: “A Labour government has carried on selling arms to Israel while a genocide is going on.”

The appetite for a party that will challenge all this is obvious. But a lot has changed on the British left since Your Party was first announced in July. Most notably, under a new leader, Zack Polanski, the Greens have shifted dramatically left and exploded in size, with many of those joining believed to be from the same 800,000 people who expressed interest in Your Party. Is another left party needed in that context, and isn’t the left becoming a crowded field?

“I want to be part of a socialist party — one fundamentally about social and economic transformation. I agree with a lot of what the Greens say, especially on environmental issues, and will work with them. Just last night I was working with the Greens on an amendment to the English Devolution Bill.

“But this is at root about public ownership and workers’ control.

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