WE HAVE NOT LOST TOUCH, SAYS CORBYN Leader vows to fight on and win 2020 election
JEREMY Corbyn has denied that Labour has lost touch with its core working class voters.
And he pledged: “I will fight to win the 2020 election.”
He called for all sides of the party – including Tony Blair and Lord Mandelson – to unite to regain power.
But he acknowledged his message was not getting through and more needed to be done to reconnect.
“I don’t believe we have lost touch with working class communities,” Mr Corbyn said after touring the People’s History Museum in Manchester.
“But I think there’s a perception that we need to be stronger in those communities and I understand that.
“We want to talk about an economic strategy that reaches everyone.”
He said parts of Britain have been suffering for decades and not enough was being done to help them.
“There are areas where industries closed at the end of the miners’ strike,” he said. “Other heavy industries were closed in the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher.
“Those areas still have high levels of unemployment, very low wages and low levels of union membership.
“One example is at Sports Direct in Shirebrook in Derbyshire but there are many more across the country.
“Our economic strategy is to reconnect with all those communities. We’re having economic conferences from the bottom up, listening to people.
STRONG
“It’s a simple message. A Labour government would not cut taxes for corporations and the rich.
“It would keep those taxes at that level to invest in an economy that grows for all. We would also properly fund health, education and housing.”
Mr Corbyn admitted that Tony Blair won the 1997 election through being united and having a strong message.
He said: “I didn’t agree with some of the economic ideas of the Labour government, particularly the marketisation of health and local government and of course the Iraq war.
“But I recognise that the strength of united communication can win. That’s what we’re trying to achieve. The party has to come together to do this.
“The important thing is getting the message out there. The mandate is in place. We’ll bring more policy forward. And I’ll fight to win the 2020 election. We look to the fight to come.”
He added: “The strategy since 2008 of making the poorest in our society pay for the excesses of the banking system at that time is still with us.
“Local authorities getting their budgets slashed by central government, social care being underfunded and the NHS in crisis.
“There has to be a redistribution in our society and that’s the fundamental point Labour is making. Real wages have not gone up for eight years as we are still in recovery from the 2008 crisis. I want us to win an election and make this country a fair and equal place.”
I didn’t agree with some of its ideas but it was united and had a strong message
Corbyn On labour under blair
The day after a disastrous budget that hit nearly five million self-employed with a tax rise, David Cameron was seen telling a cabinet minister: “Breaking a manifesto promise? How stupid can they get?”
Last Wednesday, Theresa Maybe and her Chancellor answered his question. Their U-turn on raising National Insurance Contributions, after a sustained campaign from Labour, businesses, trade unions and Tories, destroyed Philip Hammond’s credibility.
The relationship between Prime Minister and Chancellor can make or break governments.
When it works well, as it did with Tony Blair and Gordon Brown from 1997 to 2001, you can drive your agenda and get things done. But when it falls apart, as with Tony and Gordon between 2005 and 2007, it’s a marriage made in hell.
It took seven years for that relationship to break down. Theresa May and Philip Hammond are finished after seven days. They’ve become a loveless couple staying together for the sake of the NICs!
It was all so different a week earlier. On Budget Day, May was laughing like a cross between panto villain and Ted Heath. Hammond was cracking jokes about chancellors getting sacked in 10 weeks.
They knew they were breaking their manifesto promise by raising NICs, but they thought they could wing it. Hitting hardworking selfemployed people like hairdressers, builders, plumbers and white van men was bad enough.
Forcing nearly it on half a million “bogus self-employed” – people forced to take jobs without paid leave, sick pay and parental leave because their bosses are trying to save money and avoid taxes – was just as bad.
But breaking an election promise? That was the killer. Because when you lose people’s trust, that’s it. The fact that May and Hammond bodge the Budget and back down after a week, how the hell can they negotiate a Brexit deal?
I know what it’s like. As Deputy PM I had to do deals with the EU and the rest of the world. You’ve got to be able to give and take. But you have to stay strong on the points that matter. The EU’s skilled negotiators will look at last week’s events, shaking their heads.
And they’d have been amazed by Brexit Secretary David Davis’s admission that he hasn’t done an economic impact assessment of leaving the EU without a deal.
Labour has its problems. But this is the most incompetent government I’ve ever seen. May’s mob could lead us crashing out of the EU, wrecking our economy and breaking up the UK!
And that’s on top of the crisis in the NHS, social care and schools. Just like it was under the Tories in the 90s.
In six weeks’ time, it’ll be the 20th anniversary of Labour’s landslide election. May is there for the taking.
So Jeremy Corbyn and his MPs must recapture that spirit of 97 and show the country how things can only get better with Labour. chose to defend increasing National Insurance for seven days shows how bloody-minded Tories can be.
They even sent out former Labour advisers Matthew Taylor and Torsten Bell, who now work in think- tanks, to say the move was “progressive”.
But in the end they were forced to do the most humiliating political U-turn I’ve ever seen in Parliament.
If Hammond was left with egg on his face, Taylor and Bell have been hit by a full English breakfast.
Time and again, politicians have promised one thing and then done the other. People have always mistrusted politicians. Which is why we developed the pledge card in 1997. From cutting class sizes to putting more bobbies on the beat, we could go back to the voters in 2001 and prove we achieved them.
But if May and Hammond can