British ex-Prime Minster Brown’s U-turn on Corbyn

This video from England says about itself:

Two million protested against war in Iraq in London on February 15, 2003, amid global demonstrations comprising the biggest protest event in world history. As Channel 4 News reported, the war was “historically unpopular” and the “mother of all focus groups” had descended on London to bring that fact home to Tony Blair.

By Lamiat Sabin in Britain:

Brown: phenomenon Jez has restored faith in party

Saturday 11th November 2017

FORMER Labour prime minister Gordon Brown hailed Jeremy Corbyn as a “phenomenon” yesterday.

He praised the current party leader for having “restored people’s faith” in Labour’s principles.

Mr Brown said two years ago that members and supporters must not turn Labour into a “party of protest” by electing Mr Corbyn as its leader.

His supposed change of heart was revealed on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme when he said: “Jeremy is a phenomenon. He has cut through because he expresses people’s anger at what has happened — the discontent.

“When he attacks universal credit, he is speaking for many people. When he says the health service is underfunded, he is speaking for many.

“What he is saying on these things is absolutely right.”

Mr Brown acknowledged that, during his time in government, he and Mr Corbyn had rarely seen eye to eye. The latter voted against the then Labour government more than 500 times — often over the Iraq war.

When the Iraq war started, Brown was Tony Blair’s Chancellor of the Exchequer. Now, after all those years, he has said that George W Bush and Tony Blair hid evidence that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction from Blair‘s cabinet. If he would have known then, Brown says now, then he would have refused to spend taxpayers’ money on the Iraq war. Many people wish he would have refused in 2003.

“Jeremy has articulated a view of a fairer society,” Mr Brown said.

“You have got to convert this sense that you have restored people’s faith in your principles to a plan for the future that is credible and therefore electable and a programme that is popular.”

He said that Labour much now set about “producing a programme that is costed and which is popular and which is both radical and progressive” — implying that the party’s fully-costed manifesto is not credible enough for victory at the next general election.

“That is the challenge for any left-wing or progressive party,” Mr Brown added.

In May, before the snap general election, a ComRes survey showed that voters overwhelmingly backed policies in the manifesto such as nationalising the railways, building more housing, raising the minimum wage to £10 an hour and increasing taxes on higher earners.

The Labour leader Corbyn sets out a vision for a more just international order and a new and independent foreign policy for Britain when he becomes Prime Minister: here.