Quote of the Day

Labour’s election manifesto ["For the Many, Not the Few"] is the most transformative and radical programme for government the UK has seen in over a generation. It is one that plants its colours squarely on the side of working people and the low waged, pledging to reverse decades in which successive governments have worshipped at the altar of the free market, allowing blind economic forces to dictate every aspect of government policy, embracing thereby the economy as a tyrant over the lives of ordinary working people rather than a servant of their needs. In this regard austerity, rolled out as the answer to the global financial crash of 2007-08, has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with ideology – specifically the unleashing of a class war with the objective of blaming the poor and working people for the actions of the rich, whose greed was responsible for the aforementioned crash.

It really doesn’t have to be this way. You can have a society based not on greed but on justice, based not on despair but on dignity. . . . Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn [right] has reignited the kind of class and political consciousness among large swathes of working people not seen in decades, challenging in every particular a Tory political establishment that has extended itself in being a government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich.

. . . In 2010 the Tories came to power and unleashed war on society, turning the lives of millions of British people and their families upside down in service to a callously and consciously cruel belief that poverty marked out its victims as perpetrators of their own condition – their just desserts for being lazy, indolent, and lacking moral fibre. Thus the demonisation that accompanied austerity shaped public apathy if not consensus when it came to its implementation as necessary in order to trim the fact of a bloated public sector and purify the poor and disadvantaged with pain.

You don’t have to be affected by austerity, by foodbanks, benefit sanctions, zero hours contracts, and attacks on the disabled, to be offended by it. You don’t have to be a migrant to resent their depiction as the enemy within. And you do not need to be among the growing number of rough sleepers on our streets to know that no one should be allowed to fall that far. The aforementioned impacts all of us, the normalisation of so much injustice and cruelty chips away at our humanity, which is unforgiveable.

– John Wight
Excerpted from "UK Elections:
Tory Cynicism vs. Corbyn’s Common Decency"
Counter Punch
June 2, 2017

Related Off-site Links:
Britain’s Election Shocker: Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May Neck-and-Neck in Final Stretch – Dave Lindorff (Salon, June 7, 2017).
From Landslide for May to Upset Defeat – Scenarios for UK Election – William James and Patrick Graham (Reuters, June 7, 2017).
UK Election Polls: Can Corbyn Win? – Thomas Barlow (The Real News, June 6, 2017).
Death of the British Left? With Theresa May Facing Disaster, It Suddenly Doesn’t Look That Way – Laurie Penny (Salon, June 8, 2017).
Two Days from UK Election, Security Dominates Campaign After London Attack – Estelle Shirbon and Kate Holton (Reuters, June 7, 2017).
Corporate Media Hope Labour’s Corbyn Loses Election – and Badly – Ben Norton (FAIR, June 8, 2017).
This Is Not Over: We Can Still Turn the Arrogance of Theresa May Into Hubris – Owen Jones (The Guardian, June 7, 2017).
Final Election Poll Gives Jeremy Corbyn the Lead Over Theresa May for the First Time – João Medeiros (Wired, June 7, 2017).
Jeremy Corbyn Has Been in Politics for Decades With His Integrity Intact – Russell Brand (TruthDig, June 7, 2017).
I’ve Never Voted With Hope Before. Jeremy Corbyn Has Changed That – George Monbiot (The Guardian, June 6, 2017).
Seize The Moment: This Is Our Chance to Corbynize This Trumped Up World – David Swanson (Films for Action, June 8, 2017).
Generation Jezza – Marcus Barnett (Jacobin, June 6, 2017).
“It Will Feel Like Bernie Winning the Election” – Sarah Jaffe (New Republic, June 5, 2017).
Bernie Sanders Is Super Excited About Jeremy Corbyn’s Anti-Austerity Campaign – John Nichols (The Nation, June 7, 2017).
The Movement in Corbyn’s Wake – Paul Mason (Jacobin, June 8, 2017).
The Guardian View on the Election: It’s Labour – Editorial Board (The Guardian, June 2, 2017).
Vanessa Redgrave: “Democracy Is at Stake. That’s Why I’m Voting Labour” – Xan Brooks (The Guardian, May 21, 2017).

See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• Quote of the Day – May 28, 2017
• Hope, History and Bernie Sanders
• Carrying It On
• Quote of the Day – August 17, 2011
• A Socialist Response to the Financial Crisis
• Capitalism on Trial
• R.I.P. Neoclassical Economics
• Glenda Jackson on the Oscars, Acting, and Politics
• A Third Oscar for Glenda! – Glenda Jackson on the Legacy of Margaret Thatcher

Image 1: Ellie Foreman-Peck.
Image 2: Jeremy Corbyn campaigning in Southall, west London. (Photo: Jack Taylor/Getty Images)