“Make no mistake: this is just the beginning.” That is what we said after our election victory in Islington North last summer – and we meant it. For many people, the past year in politics is easy to define: Labour has failed to deliver the change the British people deserved. Refusing to scrap the two-child benefit cap. Taking support away from disabled people. Providing political and military support to Israel as starving Palestinians are shot in the street. From the moment this government was elected, it has inflicted suffering and injustice at home and abroad.
There is another definition of the past year in politics: up and down the country, communities have been organising for something different, something new, something better. Trade unions and tenants’ unions are fighting back against corporations, bosses and rogue landlords profiting from the cost of living crisis. Disability justice campaigners are mobilising in their thousands to resist cruel welfare cuts, anti-racism campaigners are resisting the prime minister’s attack on migrants and climate activists are bringing into focus the single greatest threat facing humanity. A movement for Palestine is still coming out to demonstrate in unprecedented numbers against the government’s support for Israel’s assault on Gaza.
These movements are united by a similar conviction: our political system is broken. Over the past 40 years in parliament, I have witnessed first-hand the reasons why. Politics should be about empowerment. Instead, people are shut out of the decisions that affect their daily lives. For too long, top-down political parties have patronised their members and disempowered the communities they claim to represent. When highly centralised political parties answer to nobody but themselves, you get policies that nobody asked for. You get privatisation of our public services. You get austerity. You get 4.5 million children living in poverty in the sixth-richest country in the world.
For too long, people have been denied a real political choice. Not any more. Last Thursday, we announced that we were building a new kind of political party – one that belongs to you. In just three days, more than 500,000 people signed up to yourparty.uk to help build a real alternative to poverty, inequality and war. This was not just a rejection of the establishment. It was a rallying cry for a new way of doing politics – one that is open, inclusive and democratic.
Only a truly democratic party can provide the space for the policies that are needed to transform society. Up and down the country, there is huge appetite for an economic reset. One that brings water, energy, rail and mail into public ownership. One that invests in welfare, not warfare. One that ends this government’s complicity in genocide and brings about justice for the Palestinian people. One that makes the wealthiest in society pay a bit more in tax to ensure that everyone can live in dignity.
This is the political vision that can inspire hope, not fear. The great dividers want you to think that migrants and minorities are responsible for the problems in our society. They’re not. Those problems are caused by a rigged economic system that protects the interests of billionaires and corporations. By scapegoating migrants and minorities for its own domestic failures, Labour has paved the path for Reform UK. This Labour government is here to appease Reform. We are here to defeat Reform. We are at a critical juncture, and we need an alternative, now.
One of the biggest mistakes we can make is thinking we must choose between parliament and our communities as battlegrounds for change. We want to build power everywhere. That is how you transform a moment into a movement that grows for generations to come. That is how we can take on the establishment, inside and outside parliament, to win a better society for us all.
And that is why a democratic party is necessary: to link up campaigns across society, and help people win power in their localities, workplaces and neighbourhoods. As I said, the past year is not just about Labour’s failure. It’s about the extraordinary fightback from trade unions, tenants’ unions, disability justice campaigners, anti-racist campaigners, climate activists and a global movement for peace. These groups can only achieve so much on their own. Think of what we could achieve together.
The future we deserve is no pipe dream. Look around you, and you will find proof that a better world is possible. We are not fighting for crumbs. We are fighting for real change – and we are never, ever going away.
Jeremy Corbyn is the MP for Islington North. He was leader of the Labour party from 2015 to 2020
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