‘When people’s minds are opened up, there is no end to the possibilities,’ says Corbyn
“Social justice isn’t copyrighted,” U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn told Naomi Klein in an interview published at The Intercept on Thursday.
Klein, a jouranlist and author of the new book No Is Not Enough, asked Corbyn about U.K. conservatives trying to co-opt his policies to appeal to young voters. The pair recently met up in London to discuss Labour’s stunning results in last month’s elections, the Trump administration, Bernie Sanders, the Paris Climate Agreement, the Grenfell Tower fire, and much more.
Corbyn made international headlines in June when he led Labour to secure more of the vote share than any party leader since WWII. The election results—described by journalist and Labour supporter Owen Jones as “the most incredible amazing political upset in British history”—were in part thanks to the mass mobilization of young people who turned out to support the party.
As Jonathan Cook wrote for Common Dreams following the election:
With Corbyn, the election campaign proved that there is a huge appetite for his honesty, his passion, his commitment to social justice—at least when audiences got a chance to hear from him directly, rather than having his policies and personality mediated and distorted by a biased and self-serving corporate media. Unlike [Tony] Blair, who destroyed Labour to turn it into a Thatcher-lite party, Corbyn is rebuilding Labour into a social movement for progressive politics.
Despite his personal success in politics, Corbyn said: “It’s not about me. It’s about a cause, it’s about people…. When people’s minds are opened up, there is no end to the possibilities.”
Although there are still political battles to be fought—in future races, the Labour Party hopes to win the overall majority in Parliament—Corbyn shared with Klein his bold vision for the future:
The picture of the world is a crucial one. It is about what we do to deal with issues of injustice and inequality and poverty, and above all, hope and opportunity for young people. Hope that they can get to college or university, opportunity they can get a decent job. And it’s also about the contribution we make to the rest of the world and the relationship we have with the rest of the world. I want a foreign policy based on human rights, based on respect for international law, recognizing the causes of the refugee flows, the causes of the injustice around the world.
Watch The Intercept’s full interview with Corbyn below:
