Corbyn wins praise from US senator
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn received a ringing endorsement from Bernie Sanders, the Vermont senator who was beaten to the Democratic presidential nomination by Hillary Clinton, when he spoke to a sell-out crowd at the Hay Festival on Saturday night.
Mr Sanders, who lost out to Hillary Clinton to become the Democrats’ candidate in last year’s presidential election, spoke for about an hour in a talk hosted by actor Michael Sheen.
Ending his address just before the terror attacks on London Bridge he said it was “imperative” nations unite to fight terrorism.
“We must not withdraw into our own world. We must not be America first or UK first or France first.
“If we are going to be effective against terrorism it is imperative we work together.”
He told the audience of hundreds to be “reassured” a majority of the people in the USA did not support President Donald Trump but admitted the Democrats lost the election because it “forgot millions of working people”.
Mr Sanders said he was now among those re-building the Democrats in the USA to be more representative and applauded Jeremy Corbyn for his efforts to re-build the Labour party.
“I appreciate and respect what Corbyn is trying to do. He is trying to transform the Labour party. What he has understood is that for a political party to be successful you have to involve ordinary people. I have a lot of respect for Corbyn.”
He went on to say that while the USA and other countries had worked to tackle racism, sexism and other inequalities they had failed to address economic inequality with the world’s richest 1% now owning more wealth than the other 99%.
“We are now in a struggle against a small number of millionaires.
“It is high time, and I applaud Corbyn for doing it, to ask whether it is appropriate for so few to have so much.”
Speaking in the festival’s Tata tent, in a talk sponsored by the Open University Wales, Sanders, who was cheered by the audience, also described Trump’s decision to pull out of the Paris Agreement on climate change as “incredibly stupid” warning that climate change was a global issue and to describe it as a “hoax” as Trump had done, was to deny the scientific evidence.