Jeremy Corbyn [UK Parlt (cc-by-3.0)]
IT’S Your Party. Something special is happening. In only one week, more than 600,000 people signed up to yourparty.uk.
That number is growing every day. Even I was astonished by the numbers, which were coming in at 500 a minute.
This is what happens when people are disempowered and ignored.
This is what happens when people are denied a real choice by a stale two-party system.
And this is what happens when people are offered something rare: hope.
Something is stirring all over.
In every community, all over the country, there is deep frustration and resentment over a system that only works for a privileged few.
Food banks are a major feature for thousands of people, as they queue for supplies to get them and their children through the next week.
Tenants in private sector flats are paying well over half their take-home pay to keep a roof over their head.
Young people are falling deeper and deeper into debt, trying to juggle student loan debt with the stresses of everyday life.
Water bills are rising to exorbitant levels, while distant investors rip off the system and sewage flows into our seas.
None of these issues are new.
All the more infuriating, then, that the government refuses to attend to them, and has chosen to pursue a programme of Austerity 2.0 instead.
Most egregiously, people with disabilities were told that £5billion was going to be slashed from the DWP PIP, personal independence payments, budget, and that future claimants would not even be able to apply for support for basic living needs.
Despite a partial climbdown, the government could not conceal the reality: from the very beginning, it has treated the sick and disabled with utter contempt. If it had listened to disabled people to begin with, it would know that the answer does not lie in a Treasury-driven cost-cutting exercise.
The answer lies in a review led by people from disability organisations, guided by a common sense principle: that everyone deserves to live in dignity.
Most recently, it emerged that deprived inner-city London councils are set to lose millions of pounds, under the guise of “fair funding.”
This is a carbon copy of what Margaret Thatcher did, born out of a refusal to acknowledge the levels of inequality in London or to give councils the resources they need to address them.
Why not implement a wealth tax to empower deprived communities and lift people out of poverty all over the country?
There is one area where the government has been very generous indeed. That area is arms spending: new nuclear weapons, more nuclear-powered submarines, F35 planes from the USA, and a Strategic Defence Review in which the word “peace” barely gets a mention.
The government could have pursued a foreign policy that strived to end the genocide in Gaza, defend human rights, and bring about peace around the world.
Instead, as images of starving children circulate around the world, our government has cemented its complicity in one of the gravest crimes of our time.
It is abundantly clear that people are yearning for something different; for a world that cares for each other and cares for all.
This future does not lie in cosy committee rooms in Westminster, but on our doorsteps.
Up and down the country, community independents are making a difference because they know that real change comes from below.
They don’t want their government, their councils and their public services to be in hock to corporate interests.
They want to build a community in which ordinary people have a say in the decisions that affect their daily lives.
That is why we have launched a new kind of political party.
One that is open and inclusive.
One that is grassroots.
One that belongs to you.
Many in our media struggled to understand the idea of letting ordinary people shape the future of our party.
For the 675,000 people who have already signed up to www.yourparty.uk, the concept of democracy was much easier to understand.
We’re doing things differently. By the end of the year, we will come together at an inaugural conference to decide the direction of our party, what it stands for, and how we organise to win.
To make it as accessible and democratic as possible, the conference will be hybrid. both in-person and online.
Make no mistake: whatever the name, it is always going to be your party. This conference will not come out of the blue. It will be the product of a series of deliberative meetings up and down the country.
I’m very excited to host one in Islington North as soon as we can, building on the fantastic people’s forums we’ve been doing since the election.
More than just rallies, these meetings will be an opportunity for communities, social movements, and trade unions to come together to discuss the key questions facing the future of our party and our country.
These meetings will generate fierce debate, debates that will be resolved at our all-member inaugural conference.
This will be no ordinary conference.
We will unite people based on political ideas and on political action, but also in the human capacity for creativity.
Over the past four years, the Peace and Justice Project has taught me the power of sharing ideas, poetry and music, and unlocking the most powerful human emotion: hope. Our conference will offer just that.
To make an autumn conference a reality, I will be working with my independent colleagues, trade unions, social movements and campaigners, united by the same goal: to launch a democratic party that belongs to its members.
There is a wealth of talent and creativity out there; we must make the most of what our diverse movement has to offer.
We will never descend into the gutter of blame culture against the poorest and most vulnerable people who flee war-torn societies looking for a place of safety.
The eternal search for a minority to blame for the ills we face has a horrible resonance of the last century. We will never go down that road. It is the unity of all communities, of all faiths and none, of all backgrounds, and of all languages, that can bring about real change.
Already 675,000 people have signed up to build a real alternative to poverty, inequality and war. Be part of it at yourparty.uk.
For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not any more.
• Jeremy Corbyn is the Independent MP for Islington North and former leader of the Labour Party