 Good evening. Welcome everyone. My name is Alfredo Saad Filio. I'll be chairing this session. This is Development Studies Department seminar organized jointly with the ESRC Bloomsbury Doctoral Training Center for the Social Sciences. We're very happy to welcome Tariq Ali this evening to saw us. And the structure of the session will be that Tariq will speak for about 40 minutes. And then my colleague Faizi Ismail also from Development Studies at saw us will start the discussion on the topic of Tariq's presentation. We'll then open to questions from the floor. So everyone is most welcome. Before we start let me just say a few things. One is our next seminar on Tuesday the 23rd. So next Tuesday is with Professor Gabriel Palma from the University of Cambridge. And the topic is why is inequality so unequal around the world. And that is next Tuesday at 5 p.m. in the main saw us building in room G3. That's my notice number one. Notice number two is a lever hume lecture by Professor Giorgos Kallis who's a visiting professor at saw us and he's normally based at University of Barcelona. The topic of the lecture is limits without scarcity or why Malthus was wrong. And that lecture will be on Wednesday, the 2nd of March, 6 p.m. at the courtroom on the first floor of Senate House. Senate House here in Mallet Street. Notice number three not a kind of proper academic debate at all is a play, a theater play some of you might have seen this leaflet. The play is called in the night time before the sun rises by Nina Segal. And that play is at the Gate Theatre in Notting Hill. The Department of Development Studies at saw us has got a special relationship with the Gate Theatre. We have this session on Wednesday the 24th of February 7 30 p.m. for saw us. So staff and students are welcome to book a special ticket for this play. It's the world premiere of this special event. Okay that was my series of announcements. Also very very seriously this is you might have heard of the police attack at the campus of a narrow university in New Delhi. And there's a petition that is available on change.org and the title of the petition is say no to police action in JNU and all universities. And the gist is that the police has invaded the campus. The president of the JNU students union has been arrested. The petition is to demand the release of the president of the students union to stop the arrests of students to withdraw police from campus university campuses in India and to resist against the higher education policies of the BJP government. So you may add your name to this petition. I am absolutely delighted thrilled to welcome Tariq Ali to saw us once again. Tariq has been to saw us several times before but of course this is the most special event of all. Tariq will be discussing his newest book the extreme center a warning. The book is available outside in a store that is being run by the Sri Lankan society all proceeds of sales tonight will go to refugee related charities and Tariq has very very kindly agreed to sign copies of the books after this session. Now Tariq will speak on the book the title of the talk tonight is the extreme center how the neoliberal project has shaped the world. Tariq Ali needs no introduction I'm not going to spend time on this. Tariq has been a leading figure of the British and the international left for many many years we are all familiar with his intellectual his academic interventions his contribution to the new left review his contributions to a number of pieces in writing to cinema to broadcasting the London review of books The Guardian and so on is an absolutely Tariq figure of the British left were more than happy extremely ecstatic super thrilled to have Tariq Ali with us tonight for a session that will be absolutely wonderful so welcome Tariq and thank you so much for coming to saw. Dear friends so as students others very glad to be here to discuss this theme with you because this is something which is not only relevant but is being posed in different parts of the world this is not something restricted to Europe it's something which exists in many parts of Asia in many parts of Africa and we can summarize it as follows that within the given framework of capitalism as it exists today all political parties in power or who wish to come to power within that framework have basically to do carry agree to carry through the same policies this is the political side of neoliberalism the economic side we know well it has existed now since the 90s of the last century but a more critical view has emerged especially after the wall street crash of 2008 because this crash revealed how vulnerable the economic system was and how the financialization of capitalism this applies largely to the western world but not exclusively that the existence of this peculiar form of capitalism based largely on finance the movement of money speculation at a very high level huge amounts of money there to be made and at the same time coupled with an attack on the welfare state and attack on all the aspects of life that had been agreed after the second world war the breach of that consensus the entry of privatizations in the shape of private capital in the most hallowed domains of social provision this is something to varying degrees that we have witnessed in this country and of course in other parts of europe and so the the issues raised by it are quite similar till the crash of 2008 anyone who challenged or questioned the efficiency or the longevity of the system was constantly attacked and the attack used to come in very interesting forms the attack used to come especially by saying that people who question this amazing new modernization process that we are witnessing are dinosaurs and the dinosaurs were either conservatives who refused to accept the change that was necessary or people like myself socialists radicals on the left who felt that this system was not going to work and in any case was never intended to work for the majority of the populations of europe and elsewhere so we were called dinosaurs till I started pointing out to people who heard that abuse at me that dinosaurs are in fact incredibly popular with young people that whole museums are constructed in virtually every major european country so that people can go and admire these dinosaurs and so I said I'm not particularly insulted by being called a dinosaur I'm happy to join that company and now you're making hollywood movies where dinosaurs are brought to life I said you don't need to do with that with us we're still around so all this disappeared or most of it disappeared after the crash of 2008 because nobody could now stand up on their two feet and say capitalism is wonderful it's working extremely well the system didn't die because it never dies on its own it needs pushes here and there but it was severely dented and what is extremely important is that was what was dented was not just the economy but also the psychology and politics that justified this system that is something that has to be understood and slowly gradually in different parts of this continent which I'll concentrate on today new movements began to develop of one sort or another and challenges began to be mounted to the existing political parties now my concept of the extreme center is very basic and very simple it is this that under the neoliberal system since no economic diversity was to be permitted the political side of it was that political diversity too was a think of the past from the age of the dinosaurs when you could actually argue about politics and that parties of the center center left and center right effectively carried through the same policies were there differences yes sometimes on cultural issues in this country not even on that and on who came to power and who exercised power and who made money because tied with this emergence of the extreme center in the political systems of europe was the symbiosis the linking together of big money and small time politics and if you look at the scandals that have erupted at the number of labor politicians new labor politicians who have ended up working for the private companies who they aided and helped when they were government ministers it's quite astonishing quite astonishing and some of these government members once upon a time were even members of groups well to the left of the labor party take one case milburn allen milburn the health secretary labor health secretary working now as a senior consultant for those who wish to privatize the health service and constantly putting pressure on it i remember him well in the 70s he used to be employed by a bookshop in newcastle called days of hope and he was so busy smoking all the time the trade unionists who entered the shop said to him allen lad we think you should name change the name of this shop to haze of dope and guys like him guys like him who completely made a right turn forgot everything they had believed in and are now busy agitating not so privately for the private sector to enter the national health service and to destroy it of course ultimately that is the logic of everything that is being done to have a two-tier health service one for the poor with minimum treatments and the others for which you have to pay it's a trend all over the western world except curiously enough in the united states where they've had this system and now want to change it and so bernie sanders is actually agitating for a health service of the sort that existed in britain after 1945 and in the fifties single pair so these are some of the the the contradictions we see and the fact that there has been a challenge to this extreme center is due largely to what happened in 2008 when people began to look elsewhere and to think seriously about what sort of alternatives were possible now most of the alternatives that emerged and here one has to be very frank are all positive and i support them but how radical are they and how radical should they be most of the alternatives that have emerged to one degree or another have been various forms of old style social democracy social democracy in a very special way in the bolivarian republics of south america because here social democratic measures state intervention to build a strong health and educational sector was accompanied by huge mass mobilizations of the poor that was what made it very special in europe we've had social movements of one sort or the other which have led to the formation of new political currents particularly in countries badly damaged by the crisis as were greece and spain and these movements one of them which came to power in greece seriza was so badly clobbered by the european union and its institutions the troika which said to it you cannot even push through the minimalist demands that you have projected demands which really if one is to be blunt one has to say our in europe at any rate a new small weak versions of social democracy that is all they were demanding if you look at seriza's program in the thessaloniki program they weren't demanding all that much just saying please don't privatize everything here and you know we can't compete with the european banks if you're going to buy up everything in our country please don't attack our pensioners we need help on that no because the european union and its leaders saw this tiny challenge by seriza as something which if accepted might spread to other parts of europe might be seen as an example and more radical demands might actually erupt in other parts of europe if we concede even a little in greece so they didn't and they saw greece in a curious way as a weak link and smashed it and the leadership of seriza capitulated completely shamelessly and said there's nothing we can do of course the story isn't over just a few weeks ago there was a general strike 100 000 pensioners marched the usual clashes between demonstrators and police and seriza behaving like previous governments had done before it now the the the support that seriza had obtained from so many and then was not even able to push through these demands has got people thinking again how are we to get where we want to get and it's not easy then we had the emergence of a huge movement of occupations of town squares of cities of sectors poor sectors in spain all over spain this movement evolved into polemos a large spanish radical party which has come up very quickly and is now vying for governmental power in spain and could i mean it it's more or less the same as the same vote as the spanish perso the social democrats the new labor of spain and it could even overtake them but if you look at its program which is not unimportant the program is what i say a little bit of social democracy which we can all support i don't think any progressive person would say no we won't support that because it's not radical enough one has to support all this but at the same time be very clear that yes it isn't radical enough and on its own is not going to deliver for too long that is what we face we need movements and parties which can go beyond that even but people learn at their own pace parties are formed in their own context look at this country i mean nobody but nobody would have thought on the right left center anywhere that jeremy corbin could become leader of the british labor party he certainly didn't i'm not joking he didn't we didn't and yet it happened and the only reason it happened is because tens of thousands of people young and old fed up with the lack of a choice decided to use a loophole offered by the labor party thinking it would actually help the right inside the party and took it and you know gave jeremy corbin a huge majority as leader of the labor party he got almost i think almost more votes than all the other uh candidates put together so he started off as a joke candidate for some and at the end of the campaign it was obvious who the joke candidates were the ones backed solidly by the bulk not just the bulk by every single grouping within the english media everyone they failed and corbin won and corbin's victory really brought english politics back to life again i say english because scottish politics had already been lit by the campaign for the referendum the independence campaign i mean i was there several times during that campaign it's unbelievable to see the rapidity with which people were politicized discussing with each other school students allowed to vote at the age of 16 for the first time different arguments for for independence against independence and it went on and on and on and it had a huge impact on people in scotland and in my opinion it also had a huge impact on people in england and the young people who came out for corbin were not blind to what had taken place in scotland some months ago or some years ago and so the scottish movement resulted in a huge shift many thought that after the defeat of the referendum that would be it now for another five years but it wasn't it i remember going up 10 days after the defeat of the independence side and there were two meetings taking place one of the radical independence campaign and there were 3 000 people at that and scotland is a small country and there was another meeting organized by the s&p the scottish nationalist and that had 12 000 people at it and just observing this one knew that this was not going to go away and they took scotland in the 2015 elections in the united kingdom they effectively took scotland the s&p so a bulk of the scottish working class shifted its allegiances labors hegemony in scotland completely destroyed because the scottish labor party was a parody even of the blareites at west minster destroyed gone and nobody thought that that process would repeat itself in this country so quickly but it did and so we have jeremy corbin as leader of the labor party i've argued that he is the most left-wing leader the labor party has ever had not just on domestic issues but importantly on issues of foreign policy where most of his predecessors predecessors possibly with the exception of lansbury have been quite traditional conformist in terms of foreign policy supporting the british empire supporting the british state not challenging anything here we have a challenge and they're taking it very seriously realizing that corbin's anti austerity politics are popular with ordinary people they've now switched to attacking him on the issue on which they really are worried trident and should we be wasting money having these nuclear missiles stationed here just for show even blare in his appalling memoirs wrote that as far as trident was concerned he said i can see all the arguments against it it's a waste of money and it's not practical he said this is true but it allows us to upgrade and be seen as a world power well it doesn't actually i mean that is not the case no one sees britain as a world power at all not even the british foreign office they know perfectly well what is going on and how things function and everyone knows everyone within the establishment knows that however many trident missiles you have you can never use them unless the pentagon green lights it i mean nothing can happen without the united states giving their approval so why bother with them at all i mean no one's going to wage a nuclear war in britain or if some idiot does the united states will defend britain i mean there's no doubt about that so even if you accept the sort of most absurd side of that argument but they don't like the fact that this has become a big political issue again and they don't like the fact that corbin opposed sending in bomber jets to bomb syria and so all attempts are being made to try and get rid of him before 2020 and whether it happens or not depends a great deal on how many people mobilize because if you depend or if he depends exclusively on forces inside the parliamentary labor party he's lost the question is how to use the 200 000 new members who've joined labor and turn them outwards to win over other people that is how it will be done and it can be done i i'm very confident about that but the tactics have to be very clear that the tactics which got corbin elected leader of the labor party have to be multiplied improved qualitatively and it's not impossible that there can be victory in 2020 if if the powers that be let it happen so it's interesting that the crisis of 2008 finally worked itself up in england inside and through the labor party i must say i'd never thought that that was possible again i thought the labor party really was dead and i wasn't too upset either but i was wrong one has to admit this and one reason for this is that we've never succeeded in this part of the country in coming up and building something really solid to the left of the labor party like they have in other parts of the continent and one reason for that is that the electoral system the first pass the post electoral system seriously distorts the democratic process and is designed precisely to prevent third parties from coming up and challenging either from the right or the left which is why so many of us have been arguing for a proportional system for so long in this country so that is what what happened here in the irish elections the irish labor party if the opinion polls are right is probably going to be wiped out they say it'll be left with two or three seats because of its appalling role in implementing ruthlessly and shamelessly the policies imposed by the troika and the european union on ireland they were very proud of this irish labor and the their coalition partners saying in island people are happy to live within their means well like hell and this whole concept of living within their means who determines that who determines what the means are the state which they attack most of the time when we say that the state can be used to help the poor this is attacked but when the state is used to help the rich without the state who would have authorized the trillions used to bail out the banks in all the western world after 2008 the state was used taxpayers money was used to do that so in this situation there is everything in in my opinion to play for one shouldn't be too despondent of course the situation is not good but developments in different parts of europe show that some change is beginning to take place and move new movements are emerging a new generation is emerging here and in the united states of america which wants something else in what is very interesting in the states is that the attempt by hillary clinton for instance to use a very crude form of identity politics has backfired very badly when she found out in iowa that the bulk of young people including young women voted for bernie sunders they've changed their tactics prior to that the clinton gang uh was saying that women who didn't i mean you remember have you heard of a character called madeline albright she's the one who once told cbs television that 50 000 500 000 children dying in iraq because of western imposed sanctions was worth it that's the one when she was clinton secretary of state and she's the one who said there's a place in hell for every woman who just doesn't vote for hillary clinton well she's been she actually said that to which i replied that there's a permanent place in hell reserve for nato luminaries including her so she's been forced to apologize in public in the new york times for having said that because it pissed off so many young women as if the identity of a person determined what he or she thinks on everything very dangerous to believe that because it's never been the case never been the case and it isn't the case people can be muslims christians buddhists men women whatever but they think differently and they have their own ideas on different things and they usually vote for or participate in activities on the basis of what they believe or think or which way they want to go it is not the case that there is a single identity in each person that determines everything this view has by the way often been encouraged in the last 25 years because this is not something that threatens anyone threatens the state or any anybody at all quite happy if you think like that but people don't think like that and interestingly enough it's in the united states where this form of politics it proceeded beyond belief a form of identity politics where it's now being challenged and challenged in quite a dramatic fashion so what i'm trying to say to you is that politics is beginning to emerge again and that is something to be pleased about because for a long time politics political debate political discussion political alternatives had virtually disappeared all were being discussed in sort of tiny circles and now we have a situation in different parts of europe where politics is being discussed again the second or the third aspect of neoliberalism and the removal or weakening of social safety nets the creation of a huge political vacuum at the center of politics because the parties of the extreme center essentially are no different how many people have i heard say over the last 10 years i don't do anything in politics they're all the same what they meant of course was that all the mainstream parties were more or less the same and that of course was true but the creation of this huge vacuum in european politics has not always been taken advantage of by the left we are seeing now also and this is something we shouldn't forget the growth rapid growth of an extreme right in france the le pen party is doing extremely well in the opinion polls it's not going to win france but it'll come pretty close to doing it and the frightening thing is that various polls show that a majority of young people between the ages of 18 and 26 those who participate in politics in some shape or form say that they are sympathetic to the national front in france now how do we explain this we explain this by the fact that the socialist parties completely and totally bankrupt and the groups to its left have failed to inspire anything in france otherwise it wouldn't happen in germany which is a very careful country and kept that way since the second world war by nato in the united states we have the emergence of a party called alternative for deutschland a german alternative party for a german alternative which is on 10 percent it's an openly racist party in three weeks ago its leader publicly said we should put the german army on the borders and when the refugees come we shouldn't immediately kill them oh no i'm not suggesting that but we should say you can't come in and if any then try and come in shoot to kill so in hungary in poland we have extreme right-wing governments we have a right-wing government recently elected in croatia where the minister for culture i think just last week or 10 days ago said that it would be illegal to celebrate the victories of the ugoslav resistance against the third right during the second world war why because the minister of culture belongs to a political current a political tendency which fought with the germans in the second world war with the fascist the ustache is a ustache man and this goes without too much comment from the european union leadership because they are more worried by the left organized labor or challenges to the system so this form of politics creating huge social and political vacuums in different parts of europe now being challenged by many is also being challenged by the far right and by the way it's foolish to imagine that the only thing they agitate on is islam or attacking muslims or promoting islamophobia or attacking the refugees that is taken for granted but when you talk to them the dutch right-wing or the french right on social issues they attack the extreme center parties not unlike us saying you are wrecking everything that was created that benefited the poor and workers marine le penne has pledged i just say this to you because it's worth thinking about that if she is elected president they said what will you do and she said well i will restore what sarcosi the what the conservatives and socialists in our country have destroyed is employment for ordinary people welfare for ordinary people etc etc etc so it's not just that they agitate on issues which are repugnant they obviously do that too the lowest common denominator they also say other things because it's on the other things that largely they win over support and so europe is in a very critical situation which is why i've been i must confess this because some of my friends get shocked i'm certainly not going to vote for the european union i really cannot do it after what they've done to greece after what they've done to ireland after what they're threatening to portugal i'm for europe i consider myself a solid internationalist i am not for this style european union which is nothing more than a machine for financialized capitalism i can't in all honesty vote for it and i think the left should not remain silent on these issues because otherwise once again it's the right the uk or the conservative right euro skeptics and the conservative party who dominate the debate as if we have nothing to say we have a great deal to say about why this particular form of the european union is undemocratic why it's corrupt why it has made things worse on several levels especially for the smaller countries in europe why it is now totally dominated by the large countries in particular germany and their banks so it's not a gold standard that we look at and admire it is something that has to be challenged and simply because the right are doing it doesn't mean that we shut up because one of the big problems is that the european union typifies and exemplifies the extreme center which exists now in other european countries as well so we're in a mess but we are fighting back new forces are emerging i mean the the fact i was very pleasantly surprised that a majority of the parliamentary labour party voted against bombing syria that was a step forward and this obsession with war or being seen to wage war as absolutely essential part of your armory is pathetic and why don't we insist then that these extreme center politicians who wage war in dislodged populations tell people and it should be a quid pro quo okay if we're going to bomb a country then let's take a million refugees from that country too the germans did it even though they weren't involved in the war every time you make war why are they refugees you know why why does it happen mean in parts of french africa in the middle east in libya in iraq in syria in the yemen where wars are being waged and fought people want to leave and they do leave and they come where they can and where they're allowed to go so you can't unlink the refugee from the wars that are taking place it's part and parcel of the same process just as refugees migrants fleeing parts of africa over the last 25 years do so because of what the world bank and the imf did to the economies of their countries they did not have any work so the solution to many of these things refugees migrants many of you who come from that part of the world like i do no people don't want to leave their homes they're not looking for an opportunity oh good where can we get into they only leave because there is no other solution either the economies have been wrecked or their countries have been destroyed and that is why it's so important that we have thriving active oppositions in different parts of europe and the world which challenge what is going on because if you do it consistently and if you build it up it actually begins to work thank you that's that's absolutely wonderful thank you very much tarik um these seminars do not um run themselves we have a wonderful team of students volunteers uh in development studies who run the seminar uh for us and make sure that everything functions like clockwork so thanks every month thanks very much to every one of our volunteers tonight um if you are if you are younger than i am and smarter than i am you you tweet and if you want to tweet about this session you should use hashtag saw us dev studies or hashtag esrc i don't tweet so that's why i didn't announce this before but hashtag saw us dev studies hashtag esrc um i will ask now my colleague fazie's mail to um make some comments about the talk and after that i will give tarik the opportunity to reply and then i will open to questions uh fazie okay um thanks thanks alfredo and thanks i'd like to add my thanks to tarik um for a refreshingly polemical and um an eloquent talk just to just to say a few words about the book um it's it's an it's an amazing resource because it tells an absolutely uh essential history uh a contemporary history but uh also like all important political writing it also serves to give us ideas um about in this case uh how we should deal with the extreme center and i think it it it sort of crystallizes a thought that many people have had um and and then develops an analysis from that um which is that there's there's been a kind of a silent takeover almost of the mainstream in in the last um 30 years by an economic and and social philosophy that is that is profoundly anti-democratic and um and deeply regressive um and in that sense it's also it's also a prophetic book um i think it's i think it's testimony to the to the volatility of the times that we live in um that the situation has changed uh in some ways quite dramatically as as tarik has pointed out since the book was written but the book in a sense predicts these changes because the whole analysis of the extreme center um you know foreshadows the kind of the the kind of political break um because it describes the radical extent to which um the democratic deficit is is at the heart of of neoliberalism so we are at this conjuncture and it and it raises uh uh you know many questions a whole new set of questions and i want to focus um very briefly actually on on on five questions um the first is uh about social democracy so you describe uh the hollowing out of of democracy and that we're in the twilight of uh democracy um in the book and one of the things um your argument implies is a distinction between on the one hand the hollowing out of of social democracy as as an embodied phenomenon in uh the social democratic political parties specifically and on the other um not only its survival beneath the the kind of radar of social democratic ideas in people's heads in popular consciousness but now it's reinvention um through through Corbinism so do you think the question is do you think that although neoliberalism has been an exceedingly successful project whether it's the case that social democracy never really died um you know that the ideas of welfareism and redistribution and state investment and so on have survived and remain in the consciousness of whole populations and that's why you know the changes that we've we've we've the political changes that we've seen um are now sort of struggling to find organizational expression in a sense so that's the first question um and at the same time so the second question is at the same time it's remarkable that um despite the very reels and serious challenges facing the neoliberal project um as you say no alternative seems to be emerging from from but from the one percent as well so so you know we know that Davos took place last month and just before it Oxfam put out this you know stunning devastating report on on inequality we all know the headline 62 people own half the world's um wealth now although there was a discussion about inequality at at Davos and perhaps amongst the best of them expressions of you know fear and worry uh or or at least passing concern about the state of the world um but in a sense this one percent is also in big trouble i mean if we think about it for one second that level of inequality is simply unsustainable it's not just a slogan that austerity isn't working i mean there is a crisis and there's a gulf between uh the rhetoric and the reality you know that they say that that you know austerity will see a return to growth but yet they're talking about another crisis and as you point out in the book there's there's low productivity growth uh arguably you know limited innovation uh now than there has been in the in the preceding decade so as you say there's a there's a contradiction um uh and this is despite of course the the shining success of neoliberalism which has which has managed to transfer wealth uh from from on a gigantic scale from the poor to the rich um uh and and you know in in in such a way but but but this is unsustainable unsustainable so so um the question is don't you think it's rather odd perhaps um that there hasn't been a move towards some sort of neo-kanesian solution uh to the crisis coming from coming from the one percent uh there seems to be no discussion uh of moving away from the extreme center and if we think about how social democracy was won in the past yes it was partly from below but it also came from the common sense of the establishment you know Friedman famously said you know we're all Keynesians now uh you know that as as in the Keynesianism was it was a strategy of saving saving capitalism um and if not then it strikes me that the that the um the establishment is on a kind of collision course with popular consciousness um and and uh the the third question is is also about you raise um of course um uh Corbinism and in Britain it's perhaps um ironic with with with the rise of Corbinism it's the prospect of a return to the social democratic project that's opened up the possibility of shaping uh an alternative a real alternative uh of a new politics and of course this has consequences um but then the the question poses itself not as you say whether we should support this social democratic project but how we should support it what should our attitude to social democracy be um in in a way that doesn't limit us to what in historical terms is actually a very moderate program as you were saying with with series and and and for demos um because obviously it's been been tremendously inspiring um the experience of how the political landscape has changed so so much in the in the past six months you know actually having an alternative um but of course we need to be clear that that Corbinism represents a popular aspiration but it's finding its organizational expression in a party whose core remains committed to the neoliberal project um so so so the question is around you know how do you think that contradiction between the plp the parliamentary Labour Party and its membership and growing sections of the population will pan out will will sort of that contradiction will play itself out because it's clearly a deadlock um situation and so what will uh shift that um situation um and the the the fourth question is is is just about you you describe all the all the tensions within the EU and I just wanted to ask you about other challenges or vulnerabilities to to neoliberalism on a on a on a on an international scale so you talk about US imperialism it's reach and the and the concentration of global power in in um in Washington but it seems to me they're not getting it all their own way I mean the crisis in Syria is not going their own way but also um the the kind of the the power you know Russia and China as as other regional powers which are which are proving themselves to be um to be to be challenges um and and then just finally um the the question of um the neoliberal university um so you you talk quite a lot about students you mentioned the student movement of 2010 uh in this country which was both against the fees the the tripling of the fees but it was also about it was also against the marketization that we're seeing you know the the um and and how to stop it I mean it's so as we as I mentioned we have the the the um the justice for cleaners campaign we have we have all kinds of you know uh manifestations of of um the neoliberal university and part of the sort of ideological function of of of neoliberalism will be winning arguments and destroying opposition and and shaping that kind of discourse um and of course there are growing fears um around ideas you know the in the past year the counterterrorism act has now told us that you know we have to be monitoring and and and sort of monitoring people's religious views and political views um that that public bodies uh may no may no longer be able to support bbs and so on and as you say the the j and u crackdown you know that j and u is is is a is a left wing university and and and they are being targeted so it's not just in in this country but but we're seeing it um all over the world so I suppose the question is um to what extent is that the marketization of education and the neoliberalization of it a desire to control ideas within universities and and to some extent shut down ideas and dissent and debate in the public sphere and even you know in the um you know around the the the sort of sphere of discussion thanks very much Fraser that's very uh stimulating tight would you like to yes um very important questions um the first social democracy well it depends uh social democracy in this country its high point was of course the atly government after the second world war which pushed through massive social reforms nationalized a whole number of interest trees including coal iron and steel etc etc etc um various forms of this took place in different countries in europe as well and uh so people you know the older generation of course has memories of this at the same time the same parties which were pushing through these reforms at home were entering into the cold war and uh helping to create the north atlantic treaty organization participating in colonial wars uh the french in particular but uh britain too till wilson more or less ended the east of sues and the last wars colonial wars uh came to an end but so that but the reformist side of social democracy obviously the domestic side of it stayed in people's minds and the health service in particular in this country had a huge impact but at the same time you have to understand that we now have generations that have grown up since the 80s and have known nothing else but different forms of thatcherism i.e. neoliberalism which encourage consumerism celebrity worship individualism of various sorts and this has been very strong i mean corbin says he talks about it sometimes that you know when he during the election campaign when he was getting larger and larger crowds and he would say in a meeting and you know we're going to revert to a situation where students will not have to pay tuition fees as they never did in the past and he says lots of young people come up to him and say god was there a time when students didn't have to pay tuition fees and so i'm saying the memory is differential for different layers different generations some of it of course exists but some of it doesn't exist and of course it was labor new labor that imposed tuition fees it wasn't the Tories and had there been a huge student protest against new labor when they did it we might have been in a better situation to fight the conservative measures later on but to my memory there was hardly any resistance from the universities because it was labor who was doing it and i'll tell you a story that ken livingston told me he said he was then a member of parliament in the first few days after blaire and brown came to power in 97 one of the first things they did was to introduce tuition fees by the way and ken describes he says i ran into john major the former the last conservative prime minister in the corridors of the house of commons and we'd been counselors together in lambeth years ago and he said come here ken i want to ask you something and livingston said what he said what the hell is going on with your people he said every year i was prime minister some idiot from the treasury would come to me every september and say you know prime minister if we impose tuition fees on students this is how much that the we could put in the exchequer and major said every year i would say i'm not going to do it because my parents could never afford to send me to you to a university and i know there are many many other people like that and i will not have students burdened in this fashion and he said i'd crumple it up and throw it in the dustbin this is what he's telling ken livingston and he says your people come in and the minute the treasury comes they say yeah what a good idea i'm i'm saying this precisely to show you that right from the beginning the new labor project was marred and tainted by accepting policies of this sort so but of course you're right the memory of the health service is strong particularly strong in this country though you know and i think that let's hope there will be a resistance but they're doing the privatization and the entry of the private sector into the health service quite cleverly so you can't have a big shock immediately it's being done slowly but impact it will have and of course it should be resisted the second question you posed on alternatives it is true let's talk about our own you know on the left first it's not that there are no alternatives it's that we haven't yet managed to come up with a plan that is both um how to put this program uh that is both feasible and acceptable to for large numbers of people in this country this is the challenge by the way that faces us and in spain what they've come up with is a total defense of uh you know the welfare state and saying that this should be put in the constitution so that no government can ever privatize these things not a bad idea but again it stops you know it doesn't uh go further and and i think the question is this that all these things you know the the challenging the private sectors ability here to run these things properly and secondly demanding that there is an audit of what a mess there has been since most of these industries were privatized with the probable exception of the communications industry everywhere else there's been a mess the railways particularly in this country so that will have to be an essential part of the program but a program to be successful in my opinion has to be redistributive and the question of property has to be raised as well which hasn't done we which hasn't been done and which is linked to uh uh what you were saying about the you know what is characterized as the one percent but it's probably a much larger social layer than simply one percent if it were technically only one percent we'd be laughing it's not automatic that the 99 percent is unified a large chunk of the 99 percent still has faith and belief in the system it's breaking but it's not breaking uh that quickly and it's this ideological dominance and hegemony that capitalism and its state enjoys uh that has enabled it to go on for such a long time even you know there's uh uh uh uh uh Lenin once said you remember have you heard of Lenin Lenin once said that there can be no permanent crisis of capitalism final crisis of capitalism unless there is an alternative available and clearly visible to the masses he's right he was absolutely right about that and you see it now in situations of crisis and so the different groups in south america in europe in tiny parts of asia who were struggling are struggling for something but they themselves are not quite sure what no one none of these movements either in south america or in europe have said we want to get rid of the capitalist system per se they haven't done it and for good reason they're still thinking about the defeats inflicted on what was once known as socialism and what went wrong and the effect and the impact of that defeat is still strong but many many new ideas are coming up and being discussed but till a political and economic alternative is found i think this will go on the interesting question you ask is why haven't our rulers come up with some system that can neo-kensianism as you put it well they don't need to so far they haven't felt the need to social democracy was became a major force and was allowed to push through all these reforms largely as a result of the russian revolution that's what made social democracy absolutely crucial in the eyes of the western rulers they needed something and the choice was either fascism or social democracy in some cases they wanted both i mean you'll be shocked but you can go and study in your libraries if you look at the coverage that the german fascists got in the british press in the interwar years in the late 20s and throughout the 30s it was quite astonishing i mean everyone knows or should know that Churchill was a great admirer of Mussolini he actually said the importance the Mussolini's fascists have for us is they can bring thugs on to the streets who destroy the bolshevists we can't do that we can't mobilize the masses they can he was right on that of course but not just Mussolini as late as 1939 he allowed one of his books to be published which were essays on various politicians and political leaders and in a review of Mein Kampf which he reviewed very favorably Churchill wrote this is 1939 this was reprinted that were britain to ever fall into the same situation as uh germany had i hope we would find someone as steadfast as her hitler this is the english ruling class later they decided this was a big error and mistake and opted for social democratic reformism instead but i would say that had there been no revolution in russia social democracy wouldn't have been permitted to to to to to go that far i mean and classical social democracy i mean if you look at the 1891 program of the german social democratic party the erfurt program it's a wonderful document absolutely marvellous document saying what needs to be done this is 1891 very good on class very good on race and very good on gender quite astonishing i was looking at it looking at it the other day for some other talk i had to give quite amazing okay quickly third labour party other similar events our attitude our attitude i think regardless of everything else has to be supportive i mean how can we not support Jeremy Corbyn me for me it's an you know of course one has to support him and push him and work with him and defend him against those who say he has no right to be there defend him against the attacks being made on him by you know a hardcore blairight wing of the parliamentary labour party you know something which i think was allowed to pass by was when the chief of general staff effectively the commander in chief of the british army was wheeled on to breakfast television with andrew mark burying away as usual this time he had an actual general sitting next to him and said that there was great discontent amongst the within the army i think he meant the officer corps to be fair that Jeremy Corbyn had been elected leader and were he to be elected prime minister they would be not just discontent he used the word mutiny now the fact that this was just accepted astonishing it has never happened before publicly in english history or in recent english history certainly i don't want to go back to the english civil war uh so it just accepted most the tabloids and right wing press supporting it a weak pathetic editorial in the guardian as usual what nothing and when a formal letter was written complaining to the ministry of defense the reply they said was well you know we had the shadow defense spokesman of the labour party one of the eagle sisters uh on uh in the studio and she said she agreed with the general so where do you stand no i'm just saying this is the level of the crisis inside the you know within and inside the labor party and to answer your question it has to be resolved it can't go on like this forever it will have to be resolved one way or the other i mean you know to put it at its crudest will the new model labor party entrance who came in uh be brought into the action again to confront the plp and in what way i don't know i'm just raising these problems and questions because it will have to be done at some stage they want to get rid of him before 2020 and well before 2020 mandelson said we're going to leave him there for the time being but we will get rid of him when the time comes well thank you very much i thought mandelson was so busy making money with russian oligarchs that he wouldn't have time to think about the nice cities of politics in the house of commons but anyway um um um and blare too has has come up with similar remarks so i assume i'm not in you know privy to what discussions take place within the corbin circle that they have some planned as to how they're going to respond to this um the other questions i've dealt with so i'll stop you know the e you etc we agree on that thank you very much tarik this is getting better and better okay i will open to questions from the floor i will group questions um and i will ask um everyone who's asking a question to be really brief because we uh we have a time limit and i want to have as many participants as possible yes please we've got rome microphones um that will reach you should i start okay uh thank you very much for your contribution and was really interesting uh what really interests me is this idea of uh reviving some forms of radicalism or to radicalize um the existing political parties so my question is how do you think that more radical political parties can fit into the existing uh institutional systems especially in gaining uh some sort of public support because we know that uh people usually fear what it's called as radical and this is probably one of the reason of this extreme center and the second the second question is um don't you think that this idea of creating some sort of radicalism has always also been uh one of the reason of the emergence of populist and demagogical parties which are radical because they declare themselves as outside of the political system so they're not right they are not left and they just basically create their power on the frustration of the people thank you thank you let's try and be brief i'll have three or four questions yes yeah in order to have some kind of keen solution to sustain capitalism for longer could you speak into the mic so yeah we will obviously need to have a rising in ireland after the election next month we'll need to have a couple revolutions in russia next year and then we'll also need to have the solutions there when capitalism goes into crisis and like into shock doctrine they don't wait to come up with a solution when the crisis happens they have it there ready so that it's the obvious thing to go for so what would seem to me is a very radical citizen's income like in this country 10 000 pounds per person 50 percent marginal tax rate for all individuals and all corporations and if that's the solution on the table then when there's a crisis of the banks of the financial system any day now that will be the only thing to go for it we they can't talk about giving taxpayers money to the banks we just need to say this is what's there on the table this is what we have to go for it and there won't be any two ways about it i'd like to hear retired things about that thank you um at the back there two colleagues sorry question on europe and i'm a bit concerned about from my point of view europe was a way of stopping further wars particularly you know what happened european union i'm talking about don't you feel that there's danger in voting it to leave europe and the consequences of that in terms of future wars in europe basically thank you yes hi thank you for coming my question is with the development of this new center who are the power brokers behind all of this that are dictating these policies and do you believe there's a role for shady corporations or individuals that exist to push these things thank you one final question of this round at the back there um i'm a pensioner i'm old enough to remember uh 1962 in the cuban crisis and what i've been reading in various blogs and all the rest of it about the recent um crisis again in capitalism is there's a clique of new conservatives in washington who have taken over and my fear is that these people are crazy enough we can see it already in the proxy war in syria that since putting has put his foot down and said this is the line america is no longer going to be a unipolar dominant hegemonic nation and we're going to have a multipolar world do you see a possibility of a kind of 1962 again thank you um tarik would you like to respond yeah uh you know populism you asked about is become a hold all word for attacking anything that is not the extreme center so parties from the right are called populace parties from the left are called populace um and it's or you know if you say something even as an individual listening are you being populace it's interesting how this word has come into thing i mean you know it's a crazy way of discussing but this is what the economy is the financial times and the and the press in general has happened and i don't think we should fall into the trap of just using the word uh like that i mean there's a very clear divide between right and left still it's true what you said that some of the movements uh budemos for instance in spain says we are neither left nor right when i iglesias their their leader when he interviewed me in madrid on his television show he said well what do you think of budemos and i said well i told him what i thought but i said what i don't understand at all is this line you take we're not on the left and not on the right because the whole world knows you're on the left everyone in spain knows you're on the left these technicians filming our interview know you're on the left so what's the point of denying it and the technicians at this point all started laughing uh so uh you know he didn't reply but went on to the next question it's a sort of attempt to show we are something new if by left you mean we're not social democrats we're not that discredited left fine okay but just to try and create this feeling and then you know that the problem then arises that other parties the silas in spain say similar things we are and we're not left we are not right they are very much on the right and they were spawned by the pepe so it's not a useful uh a thing that they do but how as to how more radical parties will arise you know will vary from country to country there is no magic formula that is one lesson we have learned or should have learned from the debacle of the left in the late 90s that there is no magic system where you said this is the exact form in which a new small mass party will come into being leave alone a huge one it will vary it will vary it will depend on the level of mass movements the political traditions of the country political consciousness in that country how they want to uh proceed the key thing is that they have to understand that the one thing that cannot be ignored is politics the political has to be reinserted into the life of citizens I mean that is without that you can't move forward as to the friend who talked about there will be another crisis yeah well they may well be but you know the thing is this that you cannot simply erect something when there's a crisis mean one of the forms of self-organization of the 20th century used to be the existence the eruptions of workers councils of popular councils uh in in different parts of Europe that particular tradition I haven't seen repeated in the 21st century when you have had huge mass mobilizations in Greece in Spain in the Middle Eastern countries in Egypt and Tunisia the one thing they haven't led to is the create creation of autonomous organs of power it hasn't you know for a variety of reasons which might be worth discussing at some other time so that it's not possible to do anything immediately I mean it's perfectly it was perfectly possible in my opinion in Greece and in Egypt for people who had control of cities single cities to occupy the city as a whole and elect councils to run these cities perfectly possible but it didn't happen and one reason it didn't happen is precisely because people were not sure and not clear not just ordinary people but their political leadership or whatever it was whether it was the Muslim Brotherhood or groups on the left or whatever they didn't know which way they were going to go is the crisis of 1962 a nuclear confrontation our friend means or the threat of a nuclear confrontation between the big bars going to repeat itself I hope not it would be bizarre if it did because by and large all these countries now even the ones who challenge the United States now and again and assert their sovereignty are capitalist and so are we going to see the emergence of interimperial contradictions with some of the countries armed with nukes possibly but I rather doubt it I think that one reason for the Russians detachment from the United States is they are angry they are angry at being ignored they are angry that NATO is moving up to their borders they said why can't we be part of NATO why can't we be part of the European Union we're a European country to which there's no serious reply so it's the in my opinion the Americans have been very provocative in Eastern Europe to which the Russians have responded I personally don't support either of them but you know that's not the point the point is one has as a realist to see what's going on I mean what the hell was the point of encouraging the Ukraine or threatening the Ukraine or saying that it will become a member of NATO what the hell is NATO anyway it was meant to be a defensive organization now it looks like the armed wing of the neoliberal empire it never did anything throughout the Cold War never did anything now it's put into motion anytime you know they're going to see if they can stop refugee ships coming to Greece now NATO's been told so and and opposition to NATO is really confined to very small numbers of people the big political parties including the new movements that have emerged don't challenge NATO or don't say we'll take our country out of NATO which used to be the case in Corbyn I know from his political statements in the past is very hostile to NATO but some of these policies will be shelved and that is a problem because it means that the debate doesn't continue as for the EU stopping wars look the European wars that took place the first and second world wars the European civil war if you like the causes of that war were very clear in the case of the First World War it was essentially a fight for colonies and empire that is what the Germans said that is what the British said they covered it up of course that you know it's we are Democrats and the Germans are not which also wasn't exactly true the largest working class party that there was was the German Social Democratic Party with many many deputies and the German Reich stuff they capitulated to the war but it doesn't mean they weren't there far more powerful ideologically than the than the the British Labour Party which had just been formed not such a long time ago so that war was really a war for empires and everyone used to accept this accepted the centenary commemorations where it's that we were better you know we really were in the right I mean even right-wing historians like Nile Ferguson who says it's crazy to put all the blame on the Germans was heckled at her when he was doing a talk at the BBC he gave a talk which was actually not bad on the First World War and he said is there anyone in this audience who agrees with me not a single person put up their hand he said in desperation he said is there not a single Leninist here he did say that there wasn't so it's it's a very strange system where they know they're fighting again they're sending people to make wars again so previous wars are now being prettified and glorified the second world war too began began as a war by the German imperial state to try and create their European Empire and then use that empire to try and take the world in Hitler from that point of view was a strong European and most of Europe fell to him without fighting bulk of France with Hitler the Scandinavian countries only the Norwegians resisted I mean it's a sordid history which we are not particularly taught all that well these days so I don't think that if there was if the present style European Union didn't exist the big danger would be of Britain and Germany going to war because the unifying factor today is not the European Union but it's the United States of America both in terms of determining the type and pattern of economy the institutions the global institutions that run the economy and of course militarily stronger than the whole of the European Union put together so I don't think there's going to be a war between the European powers and in any case we fight for a different Europe a better Europe a Europe of the peoples not a Europe of bankers that's the point okay I think I've answered all of this is this is brilliant we have one more round of questions and then we'll be wrapping up yes here the microphone do I have a microphone for here yes thank you very much I wanted to ask how will the emergence of new technologies like robotics affect the labor movement okay thank you very much one question right at the back no sorry oh that was a question okay hi is there any way that you would characterize an extreme center migration policy both immigration and emigration in line with near-liberal orthodoxy and would there be a shift with a victory by the extreme left and what would it look like thank you I didn't get that sorry can you say that again where are you are there at the back is there any way that you would characterize an extreme center migration policy both immigration and emigration in line with near-liberal orthodoxy and with a victory by the extreme left could you see a shift in this policy and what would it look like thank you very much question here hi my question is about what you think should be the next steps for Spanish politics we're not at a point where there's lots of different packs being discussed and even the possibility of having re-elections and as a militant of Podemos I'm curious of what you think should be Iglesias next steps in for examples should he make concessions to parties like Bessoa who do not represent the new parties of change and having been the new one of the new parties with one of the with the strongest force what do you think should they do in order to create a government thank you quick question so you've spoken about the unifying factor in the world or at least in Europe being the economy and do you feel that these discourses of of needing to maintain supremacy or influence or in any way power in what feels like a very aggressive world plays into nuclear weapons and how actually they only feed into the capitalist economy and that there is no real enemy but this discourse is maintained in order to conceal the real reason for capitalism I honestly didn't could you just summarize your question in three sentences okay so do you think that the discourse of an invisible enemy is necessary for nuclear weapons to actually conceal how in reality there is no enemy and nuclear weapons in the nuclear industry is actually very financially important question here hi just here two questions the one question is you you characterized yourself in the beginning as a dinosaur and you said you're rather proud of being a dinosaur then you were talking about Corbin and Sanders who are also well not the youngest I think Corbin is 66 and Sanders is 74 is that a coincidence or do we need dinosaurs the other question is you said you called yourself an internationalist and that you're actually all for Europe but not for this Europe last week I think Yannis Veroufakis presented his new movement is democracy in Europe movement 25 what is your position on that two more questions and super fast and I'm sorry we can't hear from everyone because we're running out of time quick question here thanks I was just wondering I'm I have a feeling you're a little bit hopeful about what this rejuvenation of politics can achieve using series as an example and their capitulation so electing electing a government like series has been the first short ticket of eliminating mass mobilizations to the policies imposed in Greece so I wonder what you think of alternative forms to manifest this content from the parliamentary option was that was that clear yeah okay I really can't remember most of these questions how do we deal with the fact that the extreme center has more has captured the media both here in the UK bbc sky newspapers etc and also around the world thank you very much final question yes with apologies to everyone who will not be able to ask their questions no no at the back sorry sorry sorry this gentleman had his hand up first actually all right very quickly I think that the neoliberal project from I'm old enough to remember I think watching Margaret Thatcher win in 1979 and it came in on the back of them capturing the the conservative party so surely any any resistance and response needs to be done through the vehicle of capturing the Labour Party if you like it can't be done on the fringes and that's one thing and also briefly but you mentioned wing extreme right wing parties in Europe and supporting socialist policies previous socialist policies and what explains that in Europe but it doesn't happen with with UK for example in in in Britain and you know the old saying if the left doesn't speak for the for the working class then the right the right wing will so that there's something that's a bit of a puzzle there I think yeah super briefly yeah I am not that evil I just wanted to ask when you were referring to the kind of old style social democracy and how it was working fairly well after the second world war do you think there are still in the war today the same kind of economic potential for the global community which is needed to implement that sort of social democracy all right about 18 questions for you did you take them all down no okay on the question posed from the front here about new technology I think there's absolutely no doubt that this will have a huge impact on the question which I didn't discuss today because it's too long to discuss but the whole question of work and what work is what it was what it means under the form of global capitalism that we have today the big shift from fordism if you like to smaller firms the emergence of new technology of course robots are part of that they don't exist on their own and they have been used for decades now in countries like Japan the United States and even China but even these robots the but you know have to be controlled by human beings so it reduces the need for huge workforces in advanced capitalism but it doesn't do away with them altogether they would they work on different levels but of course it will of course it will change things and this is being discussed and while on that theme many people who write off the United States as a capitalist power and believe it's in total decline etc which some do I don't agree with that I think that for instance the most significant development that is transforming the 21st century on the level of technology took place on the west coast the intervention the invention of the internet and the fact that that's where the big companies rose often constituted by hippies from the 60s of one sort or another I mean I was staggered to find that there's a friend of mine who was a far left Marxist in the 70s still is by the way and he said oh well I was part of the original Apple team so I said well why aren't you a billionaire helping fund the revolutions here there and everywhere else and he said they bought me out before they became really famous so I said okay so it was you know a very interesting process that took place when these companies were formed but one can't ignore the fact that they emerged in the United States they didn't emerge in in Europe or in Russia or in China or anywhere like that secondly linked to China the question you asked about China I can't really do justice to that here there's no doubt that the Chinese turn to capitalism has transformed that country and done two things created a growing middle class and created also a huge layer of proletarians to use an old word the Chinese working class today is the purely numerically the strongest and most powerful though it hasn't expressed itself politically as yet so that story isn't over but in terms of US-China relationships if you look at what the Chinese produce what Chinese industry does it is essentially not at the top level it is not producing the spare parts necessary for instance for the latest weapon technology or for the latest planes or for the latest space excursions or stuff like that most of companies like that producing those spare parts are based in Europe or America western Europe or North America they've kept a grip on that many other things the Chinese of course dominate you know consumer durables it's not possible to enter a shop without seeing something made in China so from that point the Chinese economy resembles if you like the big industrial revolution that shook England during the Victorian period and they themselves are aware of that they're very conscious I mean they invited a Cambridge historian to give a lecture to the think tank of the Chinese Politburo an old friend of mine and he said he suggested a subject and they said no no nonsense we want you to give a talk on why there wasn't a revolution in Britain in the 19th century so they are thinking they know but they are way behind and they don't want to be quarrel with the United States they will defend their patch and they will not allow any nonsense in China or its borders but they are not interested in playing a huge role as an imperial power or anything like that at least till now and you know if you study Chinese trade patterns in Africa or Asia that is what they do they build a social infrastructure trains etc etc to get them and they get on with the business of making money that is how the accumulation of capital in China is taking place and we can only speculate as to what impact it's going to have domestically and outside in the years to come now the questions asked about Spain and the situation there it's an awful situation that despite the fact that the Pepe the Spanish conservatives don't have an overall majority Rao is still prime minister and I think what is going on if you want my opinion on that is that the European Union and its big wigs are trying like mad to persuade PSOE the Spanish socialists to form its extreme center government in Spain with the Pepe the problem here is Rao no one wants to work with him because he's totally discredited so if you look at the financial times of the last two days there are reports on how the Spanish judicial system they went and raided Rao's office they've got stuff and I think they would like to discredit and finish him off or hope that by doing this he'll go away quietly then a new figure can emerge who can probably try and create an extreme government extreme center government in Spain Sanchez the new leader of PSOE in Spain is not someone who is willing to participate in any government but the barons or the baronesses of the socialist party especially the lady from Andalusia I forget her name exactly she's completely right wing very opposed to Sanchez and she would happily go into a government with Pepe if Rao was removed so that is what is going on and I think that the maneuverings of Podemos around that mean they are not stupid because they were trying to do what the Portuguese far left managed to do but they got some guarantees PSOE is not going to give any guarantees to the Spanish left none they it'll not be possible so either they are going to break up or they're going to go into a government which also means in the medium term political suicide and then of course there's the whole question of Catalonia which we don't have time to go into yeah okay so that's been asked to the the question asked whether it's accidental that Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders are representatives of my generation and not yours it's not an accident but it's not particularly special either I mean it could have been someone else who'd done it but there are no young senators in the Richard American Democratic Party and so Bernie was the only one left and you know in the United States to describe yourself as a socialist it does require some guts I mean if you look at the Republican debates and the people who turn up at these debates you know the sort of what the chairman Mario used to call freaks and monsters of one sort or another and in that milieu to say I'm a democratic socialist in itself is quite brave but I think another senator he or she if they had done it would have bought just as much support I mean this young woman in Seattle who is one council elections twice as a socialist just shows what is possible and in in in in in this country too I mean you know they're the the left of the Labour Party the 10 or 12 people just held on and held on and held on have all had their chances Jeremy was lucky he was lucky that he's that there was growing anger in the country and young people listening to his program said this sounds great I mean they didn't come with any prejudices they said what he's saying sounds great let's go for it let's give it a try and Jeremy also has a sort of quite a non-aggressive personality so the way he puts these ideas forward has had an impact on people not just young people but also many who'd left the Labour Party but it also helps to create a new atmosphere and a new space in which many many young people can function so I hope it reproduces if you like in a new way radical politicians in the best sense of the word that is what we need as for the media and the extreme centre one I didn't talk about that you're absolutely right and I should have but one of the things that happened is with the emergence of the extreme centre you had the media television networks and newspapers by and large reflecting those views so diversity went by the board whereas in and also that there's another question that whereas in the days of communism the western media took great pride in saying we're not like you you don't allow any other views except your own we allow different views to take place and on our television screens on our newspapers but they don't need to do that anymore because that world has gone so what are they proving nothing so they've become like the people they used to criticize I mean if you look at the British or the American press but very few exceptions and the guardians really gone bad too in my opinion have very few views which contradict the mainstream and are sharp enough to contradict to not to contradict but to sort of take on mainstream opinions and on television it's exactly the same the television news whether you watch CNN BBC World BBC ITV Channel 4's marginally better but by and large it's the same agenda it's exactly the same agenda it's not a single news which has a different agenda and which starts the news with different items it'll be the same items every day it's purely accidental I don't think so I really have forgotten ah the question about the whether we should just have the parliamentary option no we should you know have all possible options but given what has happened in the last century increasingly people feel that this is the best way to come to a part that that might change if nothing much happens over the next 25 years in different parts of the world it might change but till now this has been a big backlash if you like against the 20th century I mean all the Latin American radicals came to power through parliament whereas in the 20s in the last century most of the guerrilla organizations who tried to mimic the Cubans and take power through armed struggle creating small groups failed were killed wiped out a whole generation of very fine people were wiped out throughout South America simply because they tried to mimic the Cubans thinking they could repeat the Cuban process without understanding the specific conditions that existed in their own country I've forgotten anything I'm sure I have but sorry you've got you while I'm thinking what other questions there were you slipped in yours the what how to rally around Corbin how to rally how should we rally around Corbin well I mean you know one way actually is to participate in the campaigns the anti-war campaigns the campaign against austerity the people's assembly stopped the war all these things are there to be done there's a meeting I think this Friday where I'm one of the speakers preparing for the big campaign against trident which is going to be at the friend's meeting house from I think 630 to 9 to discuss how to launch the campaign outside parliament on trident to put pressure on the MPs inside which was done very effectively on the Syrian war by the way so there are all these campaigns taking place and then there's the group set up by Corbin himself what's it called momentum which I haven't attended a meeting of so I can't talk about it but you know which is so that's something something to do there are lots and lots of things which you should be involved in okay that's your question I do I think I've really tried to answer everything else if I haven't forgive me I will next time thank you so much