LABOUR'S PLAN FOR REAL CHANGE

Jeremy Corbyn and Labour : A real transformative agenda.

Next week the U.K Labour Party will be seeking an election mandate to reverse the ravages of austerity and fundamentally reshape and redefine Britain in the 21st century.

NEXT YEAR the New Zealand voter will be given the 'choice' again of voting for political parties that will all be campaigning on a platform of economic liberalism and market logic. You can either have, because you didn't ask for it, Labour's brand of neoliberalism or you can have National's brand. And that's all. The policy convergence between the parliamentary parties means that, if the historical trend continues, some 750,000 folk, unimpressed and uninspired by what's on offer, will not vote.

In stark contrast, British voters will go to the polling booths next week with a clear choice on offer. It can either be a continuance of the neoliberal and austerity driven policies of the Conservative Party or the policies of a Labour Party that are both radical and transformative. Labour is seeking nothing less than a mandate to reverse the ravages of austerity and fundamentally reshape and redefine Britain in the 21st century. Unlike its New Zealand counterpart, U.K. Labour has no plans to 'manage' neoliberalism, it plans to upend it altogether.

But will its radical vision win it the election? Not according to the British political establishment and its loyal media cheerleaders. They continue to spin that radical Jeremy Corbyn is unelectable, ignoring the fact that he almost pulled off an extremely improbable election victory in 2017 and sowed the seeds for former Prime Minister Theresa May's downfall. But while the London-based media have poured cold water on Labour's chances of winning,  Jeremy Corbyn has been speaking at packed out meetings throughout the country.

Jeremy Corbyn addressing the crowd in York this week.

And the most recent opinion polls have indicated that the gap between the Tories and Labour is narrowing as the election draws nearer. A December 1 poll for The Independent revealed that the Tories now lead Labour by just six points. That six point lead is less than half the margin of a  November 21 survey. That Labour has done this in the face of a ferociously right wing media is, in itself,  an achievement. It comes as no surprise  that Dominic Cummings, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s senior adviser, has warned the Tories that it could not be 'complacent' about an election victory.

While Newstalk ZB's Mike Hosking claimed last week that Jeremy Corbyn's election campaign was a 'train wreck' and while RNZ National commentator Matthew Hooton has tweeted that Corbyn is 'pure evil', the reality is that Labour's radical, transformative agenda is resonating with voters who have endured long years of austerity. That austerity has its origins in the Thatcherism of the 1980s, a project designed to reassert the primacy of the market through policies of privatisation, deregulation, and liberalisation. New Zealand, of course, has pursued similar policies since the election of the fourth Labour Government in 1984.

Britain’s social fabric has been worn thin to breaking point by the ravages of savage austerity. But

after four decades in which neoliberalism have presided over British party politics, the Labour Party manifesto represents an historic opportunity to swing the pendulum back towards collectivism and an interventionist state and, in the process, drive a stake through the dark heart of neoliberalism.