British politician, leader of the Labour Party 2015 to 2020
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn (born 26 May 1949) is a British independent politician who was formerly Leader of the Labour Party and Leader of the Opposition (September 2015–April 2020). He was first elected as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North in 1983. At the July 2024 general election, he returned to parliament as an independent MP. An inquiry by the Equality and Human Rights Commission into Antisemitism in the UK Labour Party in October 2020 found the Party, under Corbyn's leadership, was responsible for unlawful acts of discrimination and harassment. In response to his statement asserting antisemitism had been overstated for political reasons, Labour suspended Corbyn from its parliamentary whip and he became an independent MP, eventually being barred as a candidate for the party in future. When Corbyn announced he was standing as an independent at the 2024 general election, his Labour Party membership was formally terminated under party rules.
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If we are to ban CFC production completely, as I believe that we should, we must also accept that considerable support must be given to other countries which wish to continue to produce refrigerators and similar products. The technology to produce those goods without CFCs must be transferred to China, India and other countries which need it. If that does not happen, we cannot lecture those countries about producing CFCs while we hold that technology to ourselves and use it as an economic lever against poorer countries and poorer people throughout the world. The economic imbalance between countries is at the root of the world's problems...If we are to sort out the problems of poverty and of the environment, we require a real restructuring of the world's economy. That will not be achieved by imposing a model of market forces on the poorest people in the poorest countries but by paying those people for the products that they produce, not hoarding technological advances for ourselves but sharing and spreading them around the world, and not persuading and pushing countries to revert to monoculture production, which is dangerous and damaging to the environment.
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I described those pro-Israel activists as Zionists, in the accurate political sense and not as a euphemism for Jewish people - and that is made clear in the rest of my speech that day. I am now more careful with how I might use the term 'Zionist' because a once self-identifying political term has been increasingly hijacked by anti-Semites as code for Jews.
The British people must have a chance to decide the end of this process. We've had a referendum in 2016, we've had all the debate and we now have a PM trying to take us over a cliff-edge in a few weeks' time. That's entirely wrong. That's why I did all I could to work with opposition parties to legislate to ensure that he had to negotiate an extension.
There is a correlation between crude yuppies buying Porsches in the City and the number of people sleeping on the street. The tax rip-offs that are used to buy second homes, swimming pools and extended holidays mean an increase in the number of people sleeping on the street because there is insufficient public expenditure to provide housing for them. The Tories have always supported the creed which blames poverty on the poor. We believe that the poor are the victims of the society created by the Conservatives and the Government whom they so avidly support...There would indeed be no need for anyone to be homeless if a large number of previously privately rented houses were not deliberately kept empty by property speculators as a result of Government policies. It is sheer hypocrisy for Tory Members to blame the poor unfortunate people who have to sleep in cardboard boxes when they themselves put those people on the street, splash them every night as they drive past in their Porsches and kick dirt in the faces of the poor. They are the people to blame for the situation faced by so many people in London, and it is a matter of grave concern.
Earlier, the hon. Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Stokes) spoke. He probably represents the more honest and truer face of the Tory party when he spoke the usual racist pap about immigration causing problems and pretending that the unemployment figures in the west midlands were caused by immigration. He was in effect saying that the cultural changes that have taken place because of immigration are unacceptable. I find his remarks offensive and unacceptable, as do people in many parts of the country, who live happily in a multicultural, multiracial environment and who are not prepared to put up with that kind of bigotry.
We are now in the midst of a severe winter during which many pensioners are not eating properly, are going to bed early and are suffering badly from hypothermia because they cannot afford to pay heating bills and therefore keep themselves warm and in health...The House should be aware that pensioners are treated badly. I should be happy if the Government presented proposals for a serious and real increase in the old-age pension. The real problem for pensioners is poverty. Although my Bill would help to alleviate that poverty, the real problem is the low level of the state pension...I propose the abolition of standing charges for gas and electricity for pensioners, and that there should not be an immediate increase in the unit cost of gas and electricity. The cost of abolition, which was estimated at £300 million in a recent parliamentary answer to me from the Department of Energy, should be borne by the Government only, so that the real cost of gas and electricity will be lower for pensioners than for other people.
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For the last 40 years... we've been told that it's good - advanced even - for our country to manufacture less and less and rely instead on cheap labour abroad to produce imports, while we focus on the City of London and the finance sector. A lack of support for manufacturing industry is sucking the dynamism out of our economy, pay from the pockets of our workers and any hope of secure, well-paid jobs from a generation of young people.
He did withdraw it later on, he has been suspended from membership, there will be an independent investigation - independent of me that is - so I can't comment any further. There's no place whatsoever for anti-Semitisim in our party or anywhere in our society and our whole process is to ensure it doesn't happen.
There will have to be three objects for farming and farm products. First, we must end over-production. The over-production that is taking place in Europe and the United States is damaging and obscenely wasteful. It is damaging to the environment, and it is obviously obscenely wasteful when products that are the result of over-production are being burnt in an attempt to maintain prices...Secondly, we must end export dumping. Instead, we must promote aid and trade policies that encourage self-reliant production, which is more protective of the local economy and less dependent on the economies of western Europe and of the United States...Thirdly, what happens to the political sovereignty of poor countries that do not have the infrastructure that is available in Europe and north America when they are told that, because of the debt crisis, they must open up their economies to multinational capital to do whatever it will, and when the IMF and the World bank tell them that they must cut social expenditure? They are now told that they must pursue free trade policies for farm products. Those policies add up to disaster for poor countries.
The overwhelming and overriding demand is for greater democracy, and some form of public accountability and control of the police force in London. It is nonsense that 25,000 people should be employed at public expense and yet the only recourse that a member of the public has who complains about the police is to go to the police who will then investigate the complaint themselves and come up with some kind of answer, or to take the complaint to their Member of Parliament who may have the opportunity of being called in a debate to speak about it. That is unsatisfactory, but the most important matter is to have democratic control of the police forces in this country.
Does he concede that the whole basis of the Maastricht treaty is the establishment of a European central bank which is staffed by bankers, independent of national Governments and national economic policies, and whose sole policy is the maintenance of price stability? That will undermine any social objective that any Labour Government in the United Kingdom—or any other Government—would wish to carry out. Does my hon. Friend recognise that the imposition of a bankers' Europe on the people of this continent will endanger the cause of socialism in the United Kingdom and in any other country?