Daily Times

Britain is about to go to polls on June 8th this year and eyes are fixed on what choice people will make. These elections seem critical not just from the perspective of the future of Brexit but of Britain itself where for the first time since the last couple of decades voters have a real choice, especially in the form of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership who is contesting elections on a radical socialist agenda.

People interested in British politics will acknowledge that this is quite extraordinary since party’s former leader Tony Blair tried to eradicate all traces of socialist policies from Labour party. Famously, when Margaret Thatcher was asked about her greatest political achievement, she replied, “Tony Blair and the new labour. We forced our opponents to change their minds.”

For more than two decades, British people were only offered political choices that were based on a neo-liberal economic agenda of privatisation and the withdrawal of the state. In this regard, there was little difference between the policies of the Tory party initiated by Margaret Thatcher during the 1980s and the two Labour Party PMs Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.

What Corbyn has offered is radically different, a change visible from the current Labour Party election manifesto which appears to be a huge hit with the public. It commits a Labour government to renationalise the railways, post and water, to abolish fees for university study, and to build housing for all. The Conservative Party PM Theresa May is avoiding talking unscripted or meeting with the public. She is scared of facing Jeremy Corbyn in front of the public and refuses to engage in any live debate.

The new Labour leader, who is a committed socialist, was first elected leader in 2015 and then reelected in 2016. Corbyn’s political life was spent in the wilderness of British politics. He was more likely to be seen on a picket line or leading a demonstration than at press conference or in policy-making bodies during his long parliamentary career. Jeremy Corbyn won the party leadership contest in the face of opposition from most Labour MPs who were groomed and trained in Tony Blair’s school of politics. Different from Blair, Corbyn was a radical backbench MP throughout his parliamentary career that began in 1983. Even the MPs who supported him standing for the leader in 2015 did so to open the debate, rather than because they supported him to win the leadership race as revealed by many of them. The odds were 200-1 against Corbyn winning – but he did win. He won the leadership election with a crushing majority – taking 59.5% of the vote.

British media and the establishment ran a massive and at times hysterical propaganda campaign against him. Research conducted by the media and communication department of the London School of Economics (LSE) found out that, “most newspapers had been systematically vilifying the leader of the biggest opposition party (Jeremy Corbyn), assassinating his character, ridiculing his personality and de-legitimising his ideas and politics.” The intensity of hatred towards Jeremy Corbyn from British establishment was felt with full intensity when a serving general in the army said that if Corbyn were ever elected prime minister, the army should overthrow him. Such a statement reveals the inbuilt hostility of important sections of the British establishment to any hint of radical social or economic change.

If Labour loses the election, it will be because of its own MPs — and not because the Tories have better policy proposals

Jeremy Corbyn’s radical alternative to the prevailing system proposes a Universal Education Service modeled on the National Health Service. It will provide free education to all, young and old. He also proposes to increase the minimum wage from £7 to £10 an hour.

On the other hand, Theresa May, while continuing with conventional Tory policies, wants cuts in pensions and welfare payments and more relaxed financial environment for big corporations. Her plan to take the savings and property of those suffering from dementia was met with anger from the public, and within a day of the announcement, she was forced to backtrack. This shattered her image of a ‘strong and stable leader’ carefully created by the Tory Party and right wing media machine. However, after the terrorist attack in Manchester, she might be able to recover some of this ground by exploiting primitive tendencies.

If the Labour Party fails to win the election, it will not be because the Tories have better policies than Corbyn’sLabour Party, but because of the sabotage created by its own MPs. Jeremy Corbyn has struggled all his life against imperialism and war, and for social and economic justice. If Corbyn pulls off a miracle and wins, it will signal a fundamental change not only for Britain but for the entire world.

The writer is an independent researcher and a political worker and tweets @aatifnazar