The Tories are in helpless, floundering chaos over Brexit and on Thursday Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson gave a foolish, shallow speech that only emphasised the hypocrisy and intellectual bankruptcy of Tory thinking.
The absence of statesmanship and leadership within the government could not be clearer.
By contrast, in a speech today at the United Nation’s Geneva headquarters, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will lay out the four greatest threats to our common humanity – and his vision for a new approach.
One based on solidarity, international cooperation and human rights and with the greatest prize of all: the “survival of our common humanity”.
Corbyn will say the four threats are:
- the growing concentration of unaccountable wealth and power in the hands of a tiny corporate elite
- climate change
- the refugee crisis
- a “bomb first, think later” approach to resolving conflict.
He will state that following last year’s EU referendum, Britain “is at a crossroads” where “we have to rethink our role in the world”.
A different future
Rejecting those who “want to use Brexit to turn Britain in on itself” or “to put rocket boosters under our current economic system’s insecurities and inequalities”, he will say that Labour “stands for a completely different future when we leave the EU, drawing on the best internationalist traditions of the labour movement and our country.”
He will declare that “international cooperation, solidarity and collective action” are the values we are determined to project in our foreign policy.”
Corbyn will also call for an end to “impunity for corporations that violate human rights or wreck our environment” and announce that the next Labour government will work to create a legally binding treaty to regulate global corporations, their subsidiaries and suppliers under international human rights law.
Unaccountable corporate power
Corbyn is expected to say:
The dominant global economic system is broken. It is producing a world where a wealthy few control 90 percent of global resources; of growing insecurity and grotesque levels of inequality within and between nations; where more than 100 billion dollars a year are estimated to be lost to developing countries from corporate tax avoidance; where $1 trillion dollars a year are sucked out of the Global South through illicit financial flows.
This is a global scandal. The most powerful international corporations must not be allowed to continue to dictate how and for who our world is run.
Thirty years after structural adjustment programmes first ravaged so much of the world, and a decade after the financial crash of 2008, the neoliberal orthodoxy that delivered them is in crisis. This moment – a crisis of confidence in a bankrupt economic system and social order – presents us with a once in a generation opportunity to build a new economic and social consensus which puts the majority in the driving seat.
Global tax dodging scandal
As the Paradise and Panama Papers have shown, the super-rich and powerful can’t be trusted to regulate themselves. Multinational companies must be required to undertake country-by-country reporting, while countries in the Global South need support now to keep hold of the billions being stolen from their people.
So the next Labour government will seek to work with tax authorities in developing countries, as Zambia has with NORAD, the Norwegian aid agency, to help them stop the looting.
Tomorrow is International Anti-Corruption Day. Corruption isn’t something that happens ‘over there’ – our government has played a central role in enabling the corruption that undermines democracy, and violates human rights. It is a global issue that requires a global response.
When people are kept in poverty while politicians funnel public funds into tax havens, that is corruption – and a Labour Government will act decisively on tax havens, introducing strict standards of transparency for crown dependencies and overseas territories, including a public register of owners, directors, major shareholders and beneficial owners for all companies and trusts.
Climate change
Our planet is in jeopardy. Global warming is undeniable. The number of natural disasters has quadrupled since 1970.
So I ask Governments in the most polluting countries, including in the UK:
First, to expand their capacity to respond to disasters around the world. Our armed forces – some of the best trained and most highly skilled in the world – should be allowed to use their experience to respond to humanitarian emergencies. Italy is among those leading the way, with its navy becoming a more versatile and multi-role force.
Second, to factor the costs of environmental degradation into financial forecasting, as Labour has pledged to do with the UK’s Office of Budget Responsibility.
Third, to stand firm behind the historic Paris Climate Accords.
And finally, take serious and urgent steps on debt relief and cancellation.
Yemen
While the British Government champions some human rights issues, on others it is silent, if not complicit, in their violation. Theresa May turns a wilfully blind eye to the flagrant and large-scale human rights abuses now taking place in Yemen, fuelled by arms sales to Saudi Arabia worth billions of pounds.
Total British Government aid to Yemen last year was under £150 million – less than the profits made by British arms companies selling weapons to Saudi Arabia. What does that say about our country’s priorities, or our Government’s role in the humanitarian disaster now gripping Yemen.
The weight of international community opinion needs to be brought to bear on those supporting Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen, including Theresa May’s Government, to meet our legal and moral obligations on arms sales, and to negotiate an urgent ceasefire and settlement of this devastating conflict.
Statesmanship. Leadership. Vision – all the qualities conspicuous by their absence in Theresa May and her party.
Which means that this important speech will not receive fair coverage in the media – so it’s up to us to get make sure people hear about it.
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And Boris Johnson is thought to be going to say er.. er… mmm…. Bar Humbugs.My Dad was on I’m a Celebrity you know.
Now that is a vision from a man of integrity with a grasp of geopolitics. I do so wish he was our PM, not these corrupt chancers currently in office.
How about REMAINING in the EU, you silly man? As a 72 year old committed Socialist you have lost my vote for ever – especially as I wasted £25 to elect you.
Cos 51% voted to leave and and and our NHS will be £350 mill a week better off and and and we can have cake and Brexit means Brexit Britannia rules the waves so says Captn Boriswash as the good ship Black Pig sinks .
As a committed socialist, Chris Lovett, the alternatives are what ??? more Tory rule or worse Libdums , there is MORE at stake than just Brexit large as it looms above all of us . Corbyn , I believe , knows this and is playing a clever game dealing with a CRAP hand that Camamoron dealt him to get the best results for the many and not the few .
Remember this unholy mess is the result of the TORIES craven STUPIDITY and not of Labour or Corbyns making .
Labour under Corbyn is now more socialist than its been for many decades stick with it , it could be a lot worse .
Like you, we are the same age, everything else you write appears to be nonsense!
You go on to write, wasting £25 to elect Jeremy!
Being a committed socialist, why weren’t you, not already a member?
Remaining in the EU, when the majority of voters want out, it’s called “DEMOCRACY”!
Another nonsense!
Chris Lovett, your an old man, who’s learnt nothing in your long life!
Jeremy Corbyn is a true socialist, there’s nothing right-leaning about his policies or views!
“FOR THE MANY NOT THE FEW”!
Straight up superb stuff from Corbyn & Co but won’t even get a passing mention on our Biased Broadcasting Company meanwhile it goes into political orgasmic meltdown over perceived electoral fraud by Momentum , talk about biased priorities.
First 100 days of power amongst other priorities , root out the corruption of the BBC and sack the closet Tories now infesting it as the virus they really are
In my opinion #brexit is getting far too much attention and publicity whilst domestic and international issues are put on the back-burner the Tories have become the one issue party and raced in headstrong on brexit setting tight deadlines which is causing all the mess ups and as a result citizens are suffering
The right also think Corbyn is some old fool without a clue nothing is further from the truth he is a man with vast experience and knows what he is talking about as this post clearly shows, he also unlike the Tories loves citizens and has bundles of humanity and that is a leader worth having
Ageed. You can guarantee that the broadcast News each day will consist of just Brexit, aggrieved celebrities and a smattering of of the new “soon to be” royal. For the first time in my life I no longer bother even turning on the TV. Once they’ve got their teeth into a subject they seem unwilling to let go – I get the feeling it’s all about them showing off their interview (for which read interrogation) skills rather then imparting us with News.
Reblogged this on sdbast.
Can you give the UN or LP contact for this detail please.
I know Brexit is incredibly important but there are many urgent life-threatening things happening to thousands upon thousands of people in this country and internationally that the media willfully ignore or pay very little lip service too. I long for the day Jeremy with his vision runs this country, no it won’t be perfect no government is, I know it will be a government that cares and does not set out to destroy it’s citizens lives.
Good to read this. The piece on the Labour List website was v lame: https://labourlist.org/2017/12/britain-complicit-in-human-rights-abuses-corbyn-will-tell-united-nations/.
Without their working class dupes the Tories would never again come close to power.
Voting for their exploiters makes no sense unless they expect – or at least hope – one day to join their masters in luxurious ease.
If some way to convince them of the vanishingly remote chance of that happening could be found who knows how massive the landslide might be?
The psychology of gamblers and eternal optimists baffles me but surely somebody must have a clue how to get through to them – I’ve had little success with logic.
If some are intimidated by posh accents, Savile Row suits and the air of confidence that comes from a well-stuffed wallet maybe satire – like Spitting Image but with baseball bats – would pop the aura of superiority?
As for those who look for advancement from the boss knowing they support the right team – they’re beyond redemption and can just fuck off.
Brilliant speech by Jeremy and it maintains our faith in why we support him; JC agrees with us as left wing democratic socialists!
Some in the World are surprised that Trump has supported Jeruselem as the capital of Israel but Trump and his billionaire cronies are legal thieves, they have stolen the surplus labour of working people all of their lives, so why should they not recognise fellow (ilegal) thieves like the RIGHT WING IN ISRAEL who have illegally stolen Palestinian land; Perhaps Right Wing Barbarians empathise with Right Wing Barbarians – the true little people of the planet!
But some got it wrong, it was never Barbarianism or Socialsm because sadly early socialism was captured by bourgeois socialists – top down, elite central committees, leaders who TOOK THE POWER FOR THEMSELVES (still prevalent in China, North Korea).
The Neo-Liberal Barbarian Capitalist Little People are perhaps enjoying their brief days in the sun but hopefully the cavalry -grassroots, bottom up, participatory, left wing democratic socialism Is on the way! Peace and International Solidarity! X.