Bernie Sanders’s brother to run in Cameron seat
LARRYSANDERS,theolderbrotherof former United States presidential candidateBernie,isrunningforDavidCameron’s vacated seat in Parliament with “exactly the same aims” as his sibling.
The Green Party candidate will run in the Witney by-election later this month on equality, health-care and education, in an echo of his brother’s campaign against Hillary Clinton,
Mr Sanders, who has lived in Oxfordshire for 47 years since marrying his British wife, said: “It’s bizarre that this country can’t afford a good education for all its students, and we’ve had a huge shift of income from the bulk of the Sibling Bernie Sanders population to the very richest people. “The issue is the same as my brother ran on — there are millions of people in jobs with low-paid, insecure, poverty wages.” The 82-year-old, who is Green Party spokesman on health-care and social care, said that he and Bernie had influenced each other. “It’s interesting how similar our views are, often without having to talk to each other,” he added. Their childhood years were the key to their shared ideals. “In those days, Jewish Brooklyn was a very left-wing place. Now, Jewish populations in both the US and Britain are becoming more right-wing.” Mr Sanders, who regularly visits his cousins who live in an Israeli moshav, said his upbringing was very Jewish. “It cer- tainly influences my politics,” he added. “I can’t pretend I have a deeply religious ideology, but there is no doubt that Jewishness and justice were synonymous in my mind. We learned about looking after ‘the stranger in your midst’.”
He did not expect to be “quite as successful” as his brother’s campaign, which attracted 13 million votes but ultimately failed to win Bernie the Democratic Party’s nomination.
But he hoped to get his £500 deposit back — which would require matching the five per cent of votes the Greens earned in the Cotswold constituency at last year’s General Election.
During campaigning, he will have more than half an eye on events in America as the presidential race between Mrs Clinton and Donald Trump reaches a climax.
“I still think Mrs Clinton will win. A Trump election would be a disaster,” he said.