July 14, 2017 "Information
Clearing House"
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Naomi Klein:
I’m Naomi Klein, reporting for The
Intercept, and I’m here in London at the
Houses of Parliament with Jeremy Corbyn,
leader of the Labour Party, three weeks
after the Labour Party in an historic
election won many, many more seats than
anybody predicted – except for some of
the people in this room, who saw it
coming. And it’s just an enormous
pleasure to be here with Jeremy and to
talk about the importance of a
forward-looking, bold agenda to do
battle with the right. Hi, Jeremy.
Jeremy Corbyn:
Lovely to see you.
NK:
So, Jeremy Corbyn, it’s been
extraordinary being in the U.K. this
week, and seeing the political space
that you have opened up, and the fact
that now we’re seeing the Tories try to
poach some of your policies and scramble
to try to appeal to young people by
talking about maybe getting rid of
tuition fees.
JC:
Well, social justice isn’t copyrighted,
but it’s a bigger picture than just the
individual issues.
NK:
I want to talk about this extraordinary
moment in which the project that really
began under Thatcher in this country,
and Reagan in the U.S. — the whole
so-called consensus that never really
was a consensus, the war on the
collective, on the idea that we can do
good things when we get together — is
crumbling. But it’s also kind of a
dangerous moment, when you have a vacuum
of ideology, because dangerous ideas are
also surging. So what is the plan to
make sure that it is progressive,
hopeful ideas that enter into this
vacuum that has opened up?
JC:
It’s been a very interesting two years.
We’ve had two leadership elections in
the Labour Party, which mobilized very
large numbers of people. It’s not about
me. It’s about a cause, it’s about
people. And then we’ve just come out of
a general election campaign in which we
started in a very difficult political
position and ended up gaining three
million more votes than 2015, and the
highest Labour vote in England for many,
many decades.
There was a big swing to Labour, but not
quite enough, unfortunately, to give us
a Parliamentary majority. And so, we’re
now in a situation where there is a huge
confidence amongst those that are
campaigning for ending the wage cap in
the public sector for investment in
public services. And a huge degree of
uncertainty by the right and by the
Conservatives.
NK:
I feel like what your campaign has done,
and the boldness of the Labour Manifesto
– and this election campaign has proved
that when you put the ideas forward,
when you put the bold vision of the
world we actually want – not just the
opposition to austerity, you know, not
just the “no,” but also a picture of the
world that could be so much better than
we have, that’s when people get excited.
JC:
The strongest message – indeed. I said
this at many, many rallies and events we
held: “Look around the crowd. Look at
each other. You’re all different. You’re
all unique. You’re all individuals. You
have different backgrounds, languages.
Different ethnic communities. But you’re
all united. You’re united in what you
actually want in the sense of a
collective in society.”
And I think the election campaign was a
turning point away from the supreme
individualism of the right towards the
idea that you’re a better society when
you have a collective good about it.
NK:
And what about that picture of the world
after we win? How important is that?
JC:
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, based for recognizing
the causes of the refugee flows, the
causes of the injustice around the
world. And that is something we’re
developing. And indeed, there were some
awful events during the election
campaign. Before the election started
there was an attack on Westminster
itself and on Parliament. There was then
the dreadful bomb in Manchester. And
then there was an attack in London on
London Bridge.
NK:
And you committed kind of political
heresy because you talked about some of
the root causes. Yet that resonated with
people.
JC:
I’m not in any way minimizing the horror
of what happened or the awful things the
individuals did, but I said you’ve got
to look at the international context in
which there’s been this growth. And I
can hear myself like yesterday, on
February 15, 2003, saying, “What could
be the worst-case scenario if we went to
war in Iraq?” I wasn’t defending Saddam
Hussein. I was just saying, if you go to
war in Iraq and you destabilize the
whole country, there are consequences.
NK:
I think it’s important for Americans in
this moment to understand that you were
able to say that, and that it resonated
with people because they know it to be
true. Because we don’t know what’s going
to happen during the Trump
administration. But we do know that
Donald Trump fully intends to take
advantage of any crisis to push forward
this incredibly regressive, xenophobic
agenda, because he tried to exploit the
Manchester attacks to say this is about
immigrants flowing across our borders.
He tried to take advantage of the London
Bridge attack to say this is why we need
to Muslim ban.
JC: He
also attacked the mayor of London, who’s
the first Muslim elected to mayoral
office anywhere in Western Europe.
People were extremely angry at the
language he used toward Sadiq Khan, who
is, after all, elected mayor of the
city.
NK:
Well, what do you say to some of the
world leaders who think that they can
only go so far in standing up to Trump?
You know, like maybe they’ll put out a
sassy meme of some kind. But ultimately
they’re going to welcome him with open
arms. What do you think the stance of
other world leaders who claim to stand
for progressive values should be in this
moment?
JC:
Well, I think they’ve got to meet Trump
and discuss with him, as one would with
any leader. I was shocked by the
language he used during his election
campaign — about women, about Muslims,
and about Mexicans, about other people
in society. I was also appalled at the
language he used surrounding the Paris
Climate Change discussions. I mean,
these are serious, serious global
issues. What kind of world are we going
to leave in the future? What are we
doing to this planet? And he seemed to
think this was an opportunity for
promoting polluting industries.
NK:
Well, he actually said he was going to
negotiate a better deal.
JC:
Well, I’m not sure what he means by a
better deal and that would be an
interesting discussion. But having
worked, like you have, for a very long
time on these issues, the fact that
finally India and China, in a formal
setting, came onboard with the idea
there are limits to emissions, there are
limits to pollution, there are limits to
what you can do. For the USA having come
onboard under Obama, then walking away
under Trump, is beyond sad.
NK:
But certainly because they’re going so
rogue on climate, I think there is a
responsibility for everybody else to do
more in this moment, not to just sort of
– okay, he’s lowered the bar so much
that everybody looks good in comparison.
And we are seeing examples of that.
We’re seeing – including in the U.S.,
we’re seeing cities stepping up and
saying, well, we’re going to speed up
our transition to renewables. And
internationally I think we can see the
same thing as well.
JC:
I think that the image of the USA is too
often presented as the image of what
Donald Trump has said day-to-day,
whereas the reality, look at the number
of jobs in renewables in California
alone runs into the hundreds of
thousands. Look at the growth of
renewable energy systems across the USA,
the number of states and cities that are
serious about protecting their
environment and controlling what they
can of climate change.
NK:
I want to talk a little bit about the
way some of my friends in the United
States are feeling right now, who were
very inspired by this election campaign
and by your leadership bid within the
Labour Party.
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I
have to tell you that people are feeling
a little discouraged right now in the
United States. They are up against
Trump, but they’re also up against a
Democratic party that is fighting them
on single-payer healthcare, on universal
public healthcare, that seems to want to
keep charting what they see as a safe,
centrist path, but what we’re seeing
again and again is it’s not safe because
it’s a losing path. It’s not speaking to
people’s urgent needs for good jobs, for
a free public education and affordable
healthcare. What do you say to the
people who organized for Bernie and are
just feeling really frustrated right
now?
JC:
Bernie called me the day after our
election here. I was half asleep
watching something on television. And
Bernie comes on to say, well done on the
campaign, and I was interested in your
campaigning ideas. Where did you get
them from? And I said, well, you,
actually.
And what I would say to people is: Don’t
be discouraged. At the end of the day,
human beings want to do things together.
They want to do things collectively. And
that’s the kind of society all of us are
trying to create. We went into an
election campaign in a
difficult political position, and we put
forward a manifesto that was collective
in its approach, was specific in what it
would do, in the sense of ending
university tuition fees, in the sense of
raising minimum income, and we gained
the biggest increase in vote for our
party since the Second World War. And we
gained the support and participation of
a very large number of people. We didn’t
win the election. I wish we had. But in
that campaign, we changed the debate in
exactly the same way Senator Bernie
Sanders’s intervention into Democratic
nomination did mobilize a very large
number of people.
NK:
But you did win the leadership of the
Labour Party. That campaign wasn’t
ultimately successful within the
Democratic Party. Do you think people
should keep fighting for the soul of
that party?
JC:
Well, it’s the soul of the people, isn’t
it?
It’s not for me to tell people what
specific organizations they should or
shouldn’t have in the USA, because the
party system in the USA is very
different.
What we’ve done is change the terms of
debate, but the other key point, and
this is what works on both sides of the
Atlantic, is a method of campaigning.
You knock on doors and you identify
voters. That’s key, crucial. But if
you’re seen solely through the prism of
media that is quite rightwing and quite
conservative in its views, then all
you’re doing when you knock on the door
is hearing an echo of what people have
heard on a rightwing television station
or through the printed media.
Social media and the technology and
techniques that are there through social
media give an opportunity that’s never
been there before to get that message
across. Just think, those people that
were campaigning for social justice in
Chicago in the 1920s, the best they
could do was print their own newspaper
if they could afford it, or make a
leaflet and take it round and hand it
out on bread queues. I grew up in the
era when you used to print your own
leaflets and go and give them out. You
can now send out something on social
media, and you can reach potentially
millions of people in five minutes. The
opportunities are there. And it’s not
regulated, it’s not censored, it’s not
controlled.
William Randolph Hearst would have hated
the Internet.
NK:
It seems to me that you have received
just about as bad media treatment,
smears from elite media, as is possible
to receive. And yet it didn’t work. In
fact, it seems to have backlashed and
contributed to this feeling of loss of
faith in many of these elite
institutions.
JC:
I think there’s something in that. After
a while, a high degree of media abuse
makes you a figure of interest.
NK:
You talk about changing the debate, and
that’s clearly happened. One of the
places we’ve seen this is in the
Grenfell Tower catastrophe crime scene.
And the way in which this horrific event
has been interpreted, it seems,
throughout British society, is as
extreme evidence of a failed system that
does not value human life, that puts
kind of a hierarchy on life.
JC:
What it exposed was something about
modern urban living. This is the borough
in London that is the richest in the
whole country. Very, very rich borough.
And its council gave a rebate to the top
taxpayers last year. Gave them a little
gift.
NK:
Money back.
JC: That
tower had several hundred people living
in it, some of whom were tenants of the
local council, Royal Borough of
Kensington and Chelsea. Some flats had
been bought independently, and they were
sub-tenanted or sub-sub-tenanted. Nobody
really knew who was in the block. The
whole system collapsed. The reality was,
it’s a product of insufficient
regulation, of deregulation, and it was
a towering inferno of the poor being
burnt in the richest borough in the
country.
And that’s a wakeup call about safety of
buildings. It’s a wakeup call about the
idea you go forward to this wonderful
free market Valhalla of the future by
tearing up every regulation like it’s a
denial of the opportunities for the
private sector. And so the debate has
turned full circle on this. I went there
the following day and spent quite a lot
of time talking to those that escaped
from the tower, and talking to
traumatized firefighters and paramedics
and ambulance workers and police
officers who were getting ready to go
into the building – to was then cooling
from the fire – in order to bring out
the bodies. They’re the real heroes in
this. It’s a lesson for the whole
country. But people are frightened.
NK:
There’s a wall now – and I think you’ve
probably seen it — where residents have
put up questions that they have for the
authorities. And you know, these
questions are just completely
heartbreaking. There’s kids asking, Is
my school safe? There’s on question from
a ten-year-old child who said, “Why does
it take this to bring us together?”
JC:
That’s a good question.
NK:
I think we learn this lesson again and
again during times of crisis, when we’re
tested. We can either turn inward and
against each other, and we saw a lot of
that after 9/11 in the United States,
where Muslims were scapegoated, and we
lost a lot of liberties in this country
and around the world with these
draconian laws pushed through. Wars were
started in the name of that attack.
And here we are in a time of overlapping
crisis. Climate change is one of those
crises, and inequality is another, and
racial injustice is another. Do you
think we can connect the dots and
develop an agenda that solves multiple
problems at once, multiple crises?
JC:
Well, climate change and refugees are
linked. Climate change and war is
linked. Environmental disaster, not
necessarily always associated with
climate change, is also linked when you
have deforestation and you end up
destroying your local environment
because of it.
And so, if you look at the war in
Darfur, look at the refugee flows into
Libya, partly from the war in Syria,
also from human rights abuses across the
whole region. Also from people who have
been driven off their land in
sub-Saharan Africa to make way for often
very large corporations buying up land
to grow various crops, often rice or
fruit, to export somewhere else, leaving
the local population unemployed and
hungry. There is a connection about the
need for supporting the living and
development rights of everybody, not
just yourself at their expense.
NK:
I want to ask you if there’s been a
moment that really sticks with you
during the campaign or since that is the
most hopeful moment you’ve seen, where
you could see the country that you want
to live in, a glimpse of it.
JC:
There was a gentleman who came to our
rally in Hastings, which is south coast
seaside resort fishing town. He was aged
91. I joked with him, because I’d been
told he was 92, and he said how dare I
call him 92, he was only 91. He joined
the Labour Party in 1945, been a party
member ever since then. Very active all
his life. And he said this was the most
hopeful time of his life. And he told me
his mother had been a suffragette who
campaigned for the women’s right to vote
at the time of the First World War. And
his grandfather had been in the
Chartists in the 1850s, which helped
bring about some degree of democracy in
Britain. And I just thought, this man
has come out to a rally on a Saturday
morning at that age because he’s full of
hope for young people.
We
were characterized as an election
campaign that was full of young,
idealistic people. Yeah, there were a
lot of young people there, and many of
them with brilliant ideals and brilliant
imagination. There were also a lot of
older people there who came there
saying, “I want something better for my
grandchildren. I want something better
for society in the future.” It was a
coming together of large numbers of
people.
NK:
Well, I really want to thank you for
your leadership and for your boldness,
because it isn’t only inspiring people
in this country; I think it’s inspiring
people around the world who really do
need some inspiration right now,
particularly in United States.
JC:
Thank you very much. It’s not about you
or I as individuals. When people’s minds
are opened up, there is no end to the
possibilities.
