As a teenager with a pretty big interest in politics, I
learnt a lot of things during the 2015 election, and none of them particularly
instilled any hope in me for the future. The main thing was, to quote Peep
Show, ‘people listen to Coldplay and voted for the Nazis, you can’t trust
people’ – the nation voted Killer Queen above
Under Pressure in a countdown of The
Nation’s Favourite Queen songs, and now they’ve gone and voted in a bloody Tory
majority government. You can’t trust people.
For this reason, the whole wretched affair of the election,
and the following human rights abuse that was the Tory budget announcement,
left me feeling completely crushed and completely helpless. A similar sorta
feeling to the first time I watched Zeitgeist
and felt completely lost and overwhelmingly powerless for weeks on end.
And then after the election came and went, we were all
pushed helplessly into a five year coma of a Conservative rule with very little
hope for the future; Ed Miliband resigned teary eyed, and the people whose
views align with left-wing, left-centre, and even centre-centre politics were
left with very little hope or optimism for the future. Like many others, I felt
so disenfranchised by politics and so worried about my future prospects under
the newly elected Tory majority government (although I’ll add that it feels a
little odd calling a government with 24% of the electorate’s support a ‘majority’).
AND AFTER THAT, we were left with what was the leadership
election for the Labour party – like many others, after the election, I didn’t
think that this was something I’d be interested in in any way, shape or form,
because there were so many calls for Labour to get more right-wing, in an
attempt to snatch back some of the ‘shy Tories’. I kept this “I don’t fucking
care” attitude about the Leadership election as the first three of four
leadership candidates were announced. None of them really spoke to me as
adequate leaders for a party that’s supposed to be behind the working class and
the workers and the oppressed members of society. Andy Burnham and Yvette
Cooper were early frontrunners, and whilst I’m sure they’re lovely people that
mean well, none of their policies seem to immediately offer a radical
alternative to the Tory government that got in. As well as Liz Kendall - who’s
more right wing than the pair - they were in favour of keeping trident and passively
accepted the Tory welfare bill. The complete opposite of what you want from the
leader of the opposition under a Tory government.
But thank god, after a bleak period of no hope about the
future of Britain’s politics, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. He just
managed to creep into the election, and the party’s toxic Blairite contingent
can’t stomach him, but Jeremy Corbyn has arrived to give people hope about the
future of the Labour party. Almost a veteran of the Labour party, Corbyn’s
record in Parliament shows exactly why Jeremy is giving everyone from
disenfranchised young people to older Labour supporters so much hope for the
future.
Firstly, he offers such a great left-wing alternative from
everything that is generally associated with politics. He talks in straight
sentences, he always answers the questions he’s asked properly, and above all I
ACTUALLY FEEL LIKE I COULD HAVE A PROPER CONVERSATION WITH HIM. The notion of
‘the man of the people’ is a really tired cliché, but Jeremy is definitely a
man, and he definitely is out there to serve the people more than any other
British politician in living memory.
As well as that, his record in parliament (he’s been an MP
since 1983) shows just why he’s one of the most respected MPs there is, and why
people can really believe that there’s a lot of integrity behind his
left-leaning sentiments. When our Thatcherite government was still calling
Nelson Mandela a terrorist, our Jeremy was out there campaigning to end
Apartheid. On top of that, he also avidly campaigned against the Iraq war,
which is one of the most atrocious things that ANY PARTY has ever done, so
whilst the majority of the party blindly accepted Blair’s illegal war in Iraq,
Corbyn was out in the streets campaigning against it. Do I need to go on about
JC’s amazing parliamentary record? You’ve probably heard it all already, but in
case you haven’t; Corbyn opposes nuclear weapons, austerity, and most
importantly for the young contingent of the party, voted against the
introduction of tuition fees when they were introduced AND plans to scrap them
if he gets in. If you let the policies do the talking, instead of judging
politicians by their personalities, Jeremy Corbyn is a complete saviour for the
disillusioned, and deserves to get in on a landslide.
And if you think politics should be more about personality
than policies (or think that personality should come into it to some degree, in
which case fair enough), Jeremy is the absolute frontrunner in the personality
stakes. He’s a really confident speech maker, and eloquently spoke out for a total
of 14 minutes in opposition of the Tory welfare bill when it was announced,
without it feeling scripted and staid, which is something that a lot of people
associate with long speeches made by politicians. He’s also toured 75 different
cities, in little more than a van with volunteers in order to rally his
supporters in a way that’s so touching that it genuinely gives me goosebumps
thinking about it. I think it was somewhere in London the other day, where the
venue he was speaking at was so oversubscribed, that hundreds were left in the
street. What did Jeremy do? He only bloody addressed them all from on top of a
fire engine.
It’s maybe also worth noting that in 2010 (which is when the
MP’s expenses scandal was the hot topic), Jeremy Corbyn claimed the least
amount of expenses of any MP in the whole of the country, which he achieves by
cycling everywhere, not owning a car, and as he puts it ‘leading a fairly
normal life’. As well as that, if you didn’t think his hipster cred was high
enough already, he’s won something called Beard of the Year 4 times, and
there’s a wonderful video of him on YouTube in the 80’s proudly sporting a
jumper that ‘his mother knitted him’, saying how perfect it is for parliament.
Hero.
The turnout of young voters in the election was shockingly
low; 4 in 10 people aged 18-25 didn’t show up to vote, which obviously means
that, because many more older people voted as a percentage, the result of the
election was a long way off democratically representing the requirements of the
people of Britain. The only thing spurring young people to vote was a generally
apparent ‘let’s stop UKIP attitude’, which although admirable, was hardly cause
for young people to really engage properly with politics. However, the effect
of Jeremy Corbyn’s hugely successful campaign so far means that young people
are getting into politics for the right reasons; instead of trying to stop
negative changes, they’re here to bring about positive social changes, which is
tonnes better.
But obviously the reception hasn’t been entirely positive
for Corbyn, which I guess you’d expect in a country where the right wing press
is responsible for propaganda very much akin to that of 1930’s Germany. It’s
almost been hilarious to see the papers try and defame Corbyn; the Daily Mail
tried to run a smear piece on Corbyn, but because he’s such a bloody good
bloke, the best thing they could come up with was ‘Corbyn thinks tertiary
sector workers should have beards, and thinks pigeons are cool’.
But it’s not just been the papers that have been at Corbyn;
Tony Blair – a bloodthirsty war criminal with enough blood on his hands to
paint a life size version of the Sistine Chapel in red hand prints – also hates
Corbyn. Tony Blair, whose relevancy in the leadership you’ve got to question,
because it’s not really like an Oxford educated man with £25 million worth of
property (as well as the responsibility of being the direct cause of the deaths
of hundreds of thousands of human beings as a result of the war in Iraq) is the
kind of guy that the Labour party is here to tend to the needs of.
As well as that Sun columnist Louise Mensch, the sort of
parasitic parliamentary equivalent of that kid that drops out of college, and
then still tries to be the centre of attention in the social circles of the
said college. Mensch is a former Tory MP - who tried to desperately snatch some
public attention during the general election by cyber bullying Abby Tomlinson,
the young leader of the ‘Milifandom’ – that made headlines again as she tried
to shame Corbyn’s supporters by trying to prove that twitter’s autocomplete
function suggested that lots of people wanted to prove Liz Kendall was an
anti-Semite, or something. It’s hard to tell exactly what she was getting at.
Maybe we should designate a Mensch-only carriage on trains, and sentence her to
life imprisonment on it. But anyway, Mensch’s outlandish scheme was disproved
by a number of twitter users, eager to laugh at the fact that Louise had
actually searched for the terms herself.
But ultimately, the smear campaign coming right for Jeremy’s
throat really hasn’t worked; it’s so transparent, and the fact that the right
wing press can’t really find an angle to smear Corbyn from is just testament to
the fact he’s a bloody good guy, and the fact that well, for everyone other
than the huge media moguls behind these publications, Corbyn wouldn’t be bad
for anyone.
After this election, it really felt like politics was
becoming more and more eager to exclude young people; everything from the lack
of political coverage (and education in schools) for young people to the
outright refusal on the part of the government to give citizens under the age
of 18 the vote is why so many young people feel like politics don’t concern
them, and why lots of people feel disenfranchised and disillusioned. However, I
really think Jeremy’s policies offer a genuine alternative to the Tory
government, and that because of the straight talking way he puts his views
across, it’s a lot easier for young people to connect with than any potential leader
of the opposition before him. And as for claims that Jeremy’s unelectable –
ridiculous amounts have signed up for the party, thousands and thousands have
made long journeys to see Corbyn speak, and a substantial percentage of the
public agrees with lots of his policies – for example over 60% of the public
agree on nationalising the railways, leading economists agree with his
anti-austerity stance, and well, as someone going for the job of Islington’s MP
he’s pretty fucking electable, first getting in in 1983 and increasing his
majority every year.
Overall, Corbyn is the shake up the country needs, and him
running for the Labour leadership is the perfect post-election blues cure. He’s
electable, he’s incredible, and he’s giving hope to disenfranchised teenagers
like myself the whole country round.
By Calum Cashin
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