Tony Benn quite astutely observed: “In politics there are weathercocks and signposts - weathercocks will spin in whatever direction the wind of public opinion will blow them, no matter what principle they may have to compromise. And there are signposts which stand true and tall and principled.”

Since Margaret Thatcher was elected in 1979 successive prime ministers have ‘blown with the wind’ of neo-liberalism by continuing with Thatcher’s legacy of shrinking the size of the state, deregulating labour markets by attacking hard-won trade union rights, selling state assets to the private sector for a fraction of their market value and turning healthcare and education into commodities that can be bought and sold like a tin of baked beans.

Jeremy Corbyn has been the only party leader in nearly 40 years to challenge this prevailing dogma and provide a principled alternative to austerity, which is not a necessity but an economic policy designed to reduce the size of the state to 1930s levels.

Many people have been ensnared by the ‘gig economy’ whereby employment has been casualised to an ‘as and when basis’ so workers can be discarded on a whim when they are no longer needed. Moreover, workers, particularly in the public sector, have seen year on year pay decreases when pay increases have failed to match inflation.

The privatisation of the railways has meant that taxpayers subsidise the rail franchises to the tune of £1.2 billion a year and passengers have seen massive hikes in rail fares to pay for modernisation of the railways. It makes no reasonable sense for the public to subsidize these franchises when it is cheaper to have them run by the state and bring in much needed revenue for the Treasury. It is also bizarre that many of these franchise holders are state run companies from Europe.

Energy companies have been allowed to act as a cartel to artificially set excessively high energy prices which are not reduced when world wholesale energy prices are lowered. The Tory government’s only response to this is to advise consumers to ‘shop around’.

Privateers have been allowed to take over contracts to run services in the NHS and there has been a ‘fire sale’ of buildings, many sold on a ‘buy one get one free’ basis, to make up the shortfalls in government funding. Private clinical providers have bid for services which are relatively easy to provide with a high profit and success rate such a hip operations and if they fail to win tenders or lose them they can sue UK taxpayers for millions of pounds.

Education has been turned into a commodity firstly with the Blair government’s decision to impose tuition fees which were then trebled by a Con Dem coalition. This was after the Liberal Democrats had pledged to remove tuition fees. Students have been left with debts of often over £50,000, which means that many will not be able to contemplate buying their own homes until they are in their fifties. The teaching profession has been undermined by untrained and unqualified teachers being engaged as a means of driving down teacher wages.

Jeremy Corbyn is the only viable antidote to this rampant neo-liberalism, as he has proposed viable alternatives to this current unsustainable system.

He has vowed to re-engage many workforces to the benefits of trade unionism which can bargain collectively on behalf of workers to win fair wage increases for workers. He has also vowed to remove some of the draconian trades union acts, which limit unions ability to recruit members, strike and engage in secondary action to defend other workers.

Franchises in the railway industry would nationalised upon their contracts expiring which would mean that taking them back into public ownership would not cost taxpayers anything.

Energy prices would be capped to ensure families are not put into fuel poverty.

The internal market in the NHS would be abolished so that taxpayers are not at the mercy of greedy companies whose sole interest is profit and this would include drug companies having to provide pharmaceutical products at a reasonable rate.

Student fees would be abolished which are effectively a tax on education which was previously provided free by the state.

Jeremy Corbyn has also pledged to kick start the economy with a massive infrastructure project of building houses, hospitals and roads and rebuilding our antiquates sewer system. A £30 billion investment programme could be funded with the current low interest rates relatively cheaply and it could kick start the economy by creating around a million jobs in two years. Alternatively, capital could be raised by quantitative easing [printing money] through a newly created state bank as an alternative to the present system of issuing government bonds.

Tony Blair in 1982 expressed his clear preference for ‘true, tall and principled politicians’ when he said: “Tony Benn is one sense quite right in saying the right wing of the party is politically bankrupt. Socialism ultimately must appeal to the better minds of the people. You cannot do that if you are tainted overmuch with a pragmatic period in power. The phrases that rouse us are bound to seem stale in the mouth of anyone who has been too closely intertwined with the establishment. It may not be fair but it is true”.

Tony Blair got that right and it is as true then as it is now.

Ian Kirkham,

The Queens Drive, Chorleywood