Jeremy Corbyn unites the nation
Look at this incredible, inspiring and transformational speech by the leader of the opposition. Not only does he call for another referendum, but he also outlines how to heal the divisions in the country and take us out of this mess and chaos!
No man, or woman, is an island. No worker is an island. No business is an island. No country is an island!
We all need each other to work, trade, love and live. Workers need businesses, and businesses cannot function without workers. We are all part of the same ecosystem.
But the problem is that many people do not feel that they benefit from the system or that they have any say in how it works. And they are right!
Many people are at the bottom of the pile, on zero hours contracts or in other poorly paid jobs. Many people live from hand-to-mouth, from day-to-day, without financial security, without knowing where their next pay check is coming from, without being able to provide for their family, without having any money left over at the end of the month, unable to plan for their future.
For many people there is little or no prospect that their life is going to change for the better, to get a quality of life we all expect and deserve.
In one of the most prosperous countries in the world millions of people are living in virtual poverty and tens of thousands are homeless!
It seems to many people that it is only those at the top of the tree, the well-off and the wealthy, who benefit from the system, at the expense of the poor and disenfranchised!
This has got to change! And we need radical change!
But we should not look at any changes as setting one group against another. This is not about sowing division between different classes or between workers and business.
For any changes to succeed all groups need to work together, as those changes are for the benefit of everyone. The changes will not only benefit those at the bottom, but will benefit business and society as a whole.
A business, or political, model where large proportions of the population see little benefit from their participation and live on the breadline is a broken business model!
For too long our society has not properly valued the contribution that people make with the provision of their labour.
If the workforce is not reimbursed sufficiently so that they can participate in society; so that they can buy enough food for their family, cater for their basic needs, have enough time and money to spend on entertainment and leisure; things that give them quality of life, and to put something aside for their future; if they are not being able to live like that then they are not being valued for their contribution.
They are not being valued by business, they are not being valued by politicians and they are not being valued by society. That needs to change.
We should not be measuring our success by just the overall economic affluence, but by the prosperity and quality of life of those at the bottom, the poorest and most vulnerable.
Food banks, homelessness, the housing crisis, child poverty! The current system is broken. This must change!
When we can say that the vast majority of people in our communities have a basic and decent quality of life then we can say we are a success as a society, as an economy and as a country.
We are allindividuals, but without each other, without society, we are nothing.
We must change the system with the aim of raising the quality of the life of those at the bottom. So that they are independent and self-sufficient, and are able to control and maintain their own prosperity without being seen as a burden on public funds.
If the wages of those at the bottom are higher it is for the economic benefit of all. The workers have more money to spend and business has a larger market for their products and services, people are happier and businesses are more productive and efficient.
The current policies of cutting funds and services; the police, youth services, the care system, the NHS, is a false economy. It will cost us significantly more in the long run. The point of youth services, for example, is not to deal with people when they run into trouble, but to prevent them getting into trouble in the first place.
Our society should work like a well-oiled machine. A well-oiled machine runs smoothly and efficiently because it is maintained to avoid it breaking down. A car needs water in its radiator and oil in its engine to work properly. You may save money in the short term by not buying oil, but in the long term your car is just going to overheat, implode and splutter to a grinding halt.
That is what is happening in our country! By cutting vital support services we are only storing up more problems on the road to this country spluttering to a grinding halt. We are seeing the results of this every day with increased knife crime, more food banks, more homelessness and severe strains on the NHS and the care system.
A society built on despair, stress, poverty and inequality is a society on its way to ruin and chaos.
The purpose of those services is to keep society running like a well-oiled machine; smoothly and efficiently. They maintain the engine of our society and economy.
The great thing is that as society returns to prosperity and equality those services will be required less and less so the cost to society will also come down.
To achieve this, we need significant and radical change to how society and politics works. But the change will not be realised simply by leaving the European Union. We need to make the change whether or not we are in the EU. And it is within our own power to make the change.
Let us look at the outcomes we want to achieve, equality and prosperity for all, rather than particular political ideologies. We must be open, radical and progressive!
Two of the main changes to achieve what we want is the way we view and operate taxation and in how we deal with the consequences of globalisation.
We need to change how we think about taxes. We need to realise that they are not a necessary evil, not a burden, but an investment in the future of ourselves and society, a vital investment to ensure that society is maintained in a way that works for everyone.
We invest in the infrastructure of roads, trains, housing. We invest in the infrastructure of education, research, science and innovation. These are for the benefit of all of us and needed by people and needed by business. But what is forgotten, and what is most important is that we should also invest in the infrastructure of people. We should invest in people so that they can play a full part in society and so that they can help define the society we want.
Our current static tax system is not working. We need a dynamic system that changes according to the demands of society, with the purpose of maintaining our inclusive measure of prosperity.
When the prosperity levels drop that tax investment rises to bring the prosperity level back to where it should be. When the prosperity level goes up then the tax investment goes down as there is less demand on the services.
In this way there is an incentive for everybody, individuals and big business, to work together for the common good to maintain that prosperity and keep taxes low.
All areas of society working together for the benefit of each other and themselves.
The other major change we will make is to deal with the consequences of globalisation. To do this we will establish a Ministry of Globalisation. We cannot isolate ourselves from the rest of the world, nor would we want to as we would lose significant benefits.
But we can deal with the negative effects of our interaction with the global community. The Ministry of Globalisation will create policy and strategy to alleviate and rebound from the adverse consequences of globalisation.
No longer will we abandon communities when an industry shuts down, whether it is due to failure or due to relocation. That is not the fault of the community. We will support that community with extensive investment to produce innovation, entrepreneurship and retraining, so that they can attract new and different industries or can build their own.
We can make these changes ourselves. We do not need to leave the European Union to make this a more inclusive and equal society, we do not need to leave the European Union to give a voice to the voiceless, we do not need to leave the European Union to revive the prosperity of the impoverished and marginalised.
The squeeze on wages and the pressure on services was not because of immigration, but because of austerity and the global financial crisis. Our problems have not been caused by our fellow Europeans who live and work amongst us.
Leaving the European Union is not a magic wand that would make the problems go away. Our Europeans friends have helped our economy grow and enriched our society, they have worked alongside us, created jobs and they have boosted our health and care system.
We may regain some control if we leave the EU, but we will lose a great deal more. We will lose the influence and control we have as leaders of the European Union.
We are not going anywhere; we will still be in the continent of Europe. We will still want to trade with Europe. To do so we will still have to follow their regulations, but will no longer have a say. We will still want to engage with the European Union on research, innovation, education, the environment and business, but we will no longer have a say.
We should not be sitting on the fringes of Europe hoping for benefits or a deal that someone else will decide. We should be front and centre leading Europe as we have done in the past.
The United Kingdom helped create the European Union as we see it today and it should be the United Kingdom that leads on deciding what the European Union of tomorrow will be.
The European Union is not a dictatorship. The European Union is not led by unelected bureaucrats. The European Union is a collaboration of democratic nations working together for the common good. This may sometimes require compromise, but that would be no different with relationships with the US, India or China.
The payments the UK makes to the EU go to help increase the prosperity of the continent by developing poorest regions, both in the UK as well as other countries, and to fund research and innovation for all.
Any shortfall in the money we get back is more than made up from the benefits of the free trade agreements that are the essence of our membership of the European Union. Our economy is bigger and there is more money from taxes, for vital services, because of EU membership.
There is little prospect that those benefits will be replaced by different agreements with countries in more far-flung parts of the world.
The process of leaving the EU has been a travesty and a fiasco from start to finish. The management of the Brexit process by the UK government over the last three years has been a catalogue of incompetence and misjudgement by those obsessed with ideology rather than the good of the country.
The referendum was a simplistic question for a complex problem. The vote did not adequately take into account the consequences of leaving.
The result may have been to leave the European Union, but the referendum did not specify how we were going to leave. And the problem is that there are different ways to leave. That is why it has not been possible to Brexit, even Brexiters cannot decide what Brexit means.
We could have Brexited on the 29th of March with Theresa May’s Brexit if Brexiters within the Tory party had not voted against Brexit!
This ineptitude, along with gross contempt for facts and the truth, has severely damaged the reputation and integrity of the United Kingdom in the eyes of the rest of the world.
We must repair that reputation by putting an end, one way or another, to this grotesque internal battle and regain our former position on the world stage.
Our sovereignty lies with Parliament. But Parliament is at an impasse and has not been able to decide. It is only sensible that the people now decide what to do, to break that impasse.
We have now a more specific definition of a leave option than we did before. We better understand the consequences of leaving, and staying. We are better informed now than we were before. We will now have something concrete to implement.
Therefore, we must hold a confirmatory vote on leaving.
However, we should not forget the voices of those who do not prevail. We need a sensible process so that we can revisit the decision if it is not a decisive vote. Whichever result gets more than 50% will be accepted and implemented. However, if that result is less than 60% then another referendum will be held in 10 years’ time to either leave or re-join the EU. If one side gets more than 60% the question will be considered resolved and no more votes will be scheduled.
On the whole the benefits of being within the EU outweigh the disadvantages. However, we should not underestimate the power and control we have over ourselves and our country, irrespective of the European Union.
We have the power to change the country for the better. We can address the grievances, the hardship, the injustice that led to people voting Leave in the referendum. We know what we need to do, we have the political will and with the support of the people we will transform this country into an advanced, inclusive, compassionate, progressive, highly skilled, dynamic environment beneficial to both business and workers.
We will transform this country into a society where no-one is left behind, no community is abandoned, and no person is ignored.
We will transform this country into a cohesive community where every region is supported and where we all benefit from common goals.
By focusing on the purpose of the prosperity and quality of life that unifies us all, we can work together to transform to a society that works for everyone and heal the divisions created by the rhetoric of the referendum.
No country is an island. No business is an island. No worker is an island. No person is an island! We are all in it together!
Of course, as you’ve probably guessed, this is not a speech by Jeremy Corbyn, or anyone else. But this is the sort of thing a leader of the opposition should be saying, to address the problems leading to Brexit and to unify the country.
If you agree it would great to get this message in front of all those who are in the position to take notice and fulfil these aspirations, including Jeremy Corbyn and other leaders. So, please share and retweet this as widely as you can, especially to any influencers in the media if you can reach them directly.