 Here we are in the middle of a snap general election campaign, which I'd be surprised if any of us would have predicted a few weeks ago before the announcement that it was going to take place. It's one of those things where in retrospect it seems very unsurprising, but of course at the time it came as a massive surprise. Partly perhaps because the Prime Minister had repeatedly and categorically denied that there ever could be a snap general election on numerous occasions. But there we are, she's had a sudden change of thought, a change of heart. And we are now facing an election which the Tories, and I will argue, basically the whole of the British capitalist establishment are hoping is going to result in a landslide Tory majority. The one possibility of preventing that happening is, I would say, Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party. So here we are to discuss how we can make that a reality, how we can make a Tory disappointment the possibility through Jeremy Corbyn. But before I get onto that specific concrete question, I want to reflect a bit on the kind of period in the context of this election. I think that we can't really understand the election campaign properly. Unless we talk about what's been going on over the last few years, this is the second general election in basically as many years. It's about two years, isn't it, since the 2015 general election. It's also now the fourth meaningful vote that we've had in again as many years. We had the Scottish referendum, obviously we weren't voting in that. But we had the Scottish referendum in 2014, we had the election in 2015, the EU referendum of course, the year after. And now the British public has been asked again to make a pretty important decision on the electoral field. And I would say all of these elections reflect the massive instability that exists within British capitalism, also within global capitalism. We, as Marxists have explained many times really since the 2008 crash, that all of the attempts on the part of the state and on the part of the capitalist class to redress, if you like, the instability, the imbalance, and the contradictions thrown up by the crisis in the economy at the basis of capitalist society. All of the attempts to restore equilibrium on the economic plane would result in economic instability, chaos if you like, crisis. And I think that we're seeing an element of that, but of course it's not this unconscious mechanical relationship that you suddenly just have complete instability. The state itself and the establishment are trying to react back on that, they're trying to stabilise things further. And I would say we've seen that in the attempts of David Cameron, remember him, the last PM or the gambling that he went about doing, in order to try and restore some kind of semblance of order with his own party and with his own government. I'm sure we'll all agree that the attempt to the calling of the EU referendum was an attempt to ble take, a very vocal and increasingly influential wing of his party, which of course reflects at the base of society, especially amongst the Tory rank and file, which had become increasingly narrow and based on a certain section of society at a rabidly neuroskeptic or pro-Brexit section of society. It was an attempt to redress that balance and shore up his majority. And of course that gamble then reflected back on the stability of British capitalism as a whole and ultimately on the economy, which is surely being affected and will be affected by Brexit. You could say something similar about the Scottish referendum as well. Of course the Scottish referendum didn't go against Cameron, but of course what was going on was a huge shift in Scottish society, a massive change in the political landscape which resulted in the SNP sweeping almost every seat in the general election after that. And I'm sure you're already aware of this. And the setup that we have now is a Tory majority, with a working majority of 17 MPs, up until recently, and I'll get to this, was looking at investigations into 30 of those seats, of course that's now no longer in the pipeline. We'll discuss the reason for that a little bit later on. But also has a, I think at the time of the referendum, the majority, if I'm not mistaken of Tory MPs, reflecting the base of their party, campaigned vocally for Brexit, a situation in which Theresa May is facing Brexit negotiations where we're not just talking about the EU officials and EU bureaucrats, we're also talking about the very important interests from the point of view of British capitalism of the city of London, of the British capitalist class, who need the single market to sell their goods for passporting in the realm of banking and financial services, which of course are a very important part of the British economy. You've got these interests on the one hand, and then behind her she has a party which is campaigning or was campaigning for Brexit, which will accept nothing less than a hard Brexit, and any kind of movement backward, by which I mean a concession on having to pay the £60 billion to £100 billion, the figure seems to be put out of nowhere, but the billions of pounds that the UK will be asked to pay one way or another, or to capitulate on the jurisdiction of the European, sorry, the Court of Justice of the European Union, as it's now called, or the question of freedom of movement and so on, any concession on these quite important topics would result in an enormous rebellion, not just in the Tory party, but also in the country amongst the most passionate wing of lead voters, which would leave the majority utterly worthless. So, as we explained at the time at Socialist Appeal, Theresa May, up until this point, and I would say still at this point, is caught between a rock and a hard place or a rock and a hard Brexit. She is forced effectively to take this very, very hard position which is against the interests, it cuts very strongly against the interests of the bulk of British capitalism and British capitalist class, in order to make sure that you have some semblance of political stability. Now, you have, I would say, an attempt, a calculated attempt to overcome that problem, to overcome that obstacle, and that's what this Tory majority that they're aiming for is all about. And it's an open secret, there's actually a very interesting article in the Financial Times by Martin Wolff, who's the chief economics correspondent, which is entitled, if I remember correctly, it says, May has an opportunity to basically retain membership of the single market, which is interesting because you don't associate a May victory with remaining a member of the single market. And he goes on to explain, and I'll quote from the article. For Mrs May, the aim of the election should be allowed to make decisions in the national interest, by which we mean, of course, the interest of the British capitalist class, with extra time and a larger majority if achieved, she could make unpopular but necessary decisions. The past week will have shown her that these will be very unpopular. He was referring to the disastrous dinner that got leaked with John Claude Juncker. If she obtained a smooth transition via membership of the single market and customs union until a long term agreement is reached, she will have given UK business and so the UK economy what it needs most. Avoiding a big shock in 2019 is a price for which it is worth paying a great deal. It is a chance the election could give her, she should take it. So you here have, if you like a spokesman, one of the strategists of capital have heard that expression used in relation to these people. Someone expressing quite directly the interests of the capitalists in this matter. For despite the fact that Theresa May is standing in a high and hard brexit programme, I would say the whole of the British establishment is mobilising behind her in order to make sure that you have a strong and stable government. Have you heard that expression before? I do make it. It's the campaign slogan for the Conservative Party, if you know what I mean. A strong and stable government, which in the not too distant future can make decisions which will be cutting against its own social base, will be cutting against the British population for the most part. I don't just mean relation to Brexit negotiations. We are talking about Tory government here. So the austerity and attacks on the working class are very much going to continue. But which can withstand this. It can withstand the shocks which everybody knows is coming. Everybody knows that over the next couple of years there are going to be major concessions being made and there are going to be major political shocks in Britain. Perhaps internationally as well, which could of course impact on the situation in Britain. So a three-figure Tory majority would hopefully, for them, provide a cushion which means they can then basically turn around and act directly in the interests of the capitalist class. This shows that it expresses itself concretely, I would say, in quite an interesting phenomenon that you see almost unanimity, I would say, in the way that the media in particular, but also the British establishment are behaving in this election. Now I'll mention briefly the question of the 30 seats under investigation for electoral fraud. Now the Tory party was found guilty, responsible, if that's the word, by the Electoral Commission for basically not declaring its expenses. It had a number, not just one, but a number of so-called battle buses going to important seats full of activists and it wasn't declaring its expenses in the local areas where they were campaigning. The Electoral Commission said that's electoral fraud, finding £70,000. The Crown's prosecution service looked into the matter to see whether criminal investigations for electoral fraud would be appropriate. Not convictions, but investigations to then bring charges. It found that in all 30 cases, no further charges would be brought before the election. You've already seen the headlines saying that Tory's cleared, Theresa May could release a breath, a sigh of relief is the expression I'm looking for, and then could say, see they've done nothing wrong. Tory MPs were coming out demanding apologies. One Tory MP said that heads should roll at the Electoral Commission for even bringing this up. That's worth looking into this. Because the CPS said that the reason they weren't going to look into any further charges was because although there was clear evidence that a misreporting and underreporting of expenses had indeed taken place, that's never been in question. So the wrong had been committed, if you like. All of the people being investigated, or potentially investigated, all of the local activists and electoral officers, or agents, I think the word is sorry, whose responsibility was to report correctly this information, they didn't know they were doing wrong because the Tory National Office had told them that they were sorting it out. So no harm done there. The Tory party can get away with basically buying seats or attempting to buy seats. The fact that this has taken place just for a very important election, not just for the country but specifically for the interests of British capital is not a coincidence, I'd say. I would say that this is an example of the British establishment acting, if you like, in its own interests by backing a given political party an election. I would say this gives us quite a good demonstration, subtle demonstration, although not that subtle thinking about it, of the way that bourgeois democracy actually works. It's not quite as simple and idealistic of how we all get a full and fair decision on who rules us and we can hold those people accountable. What we're seeing is when the situation gets a bit more murky, when the class struggle, the picture that the class struggle starts to rise, after years and years of austerity, when millions and millions more people are having to fall into precarious employment, having to go for food banks, basically for charity in order to survive, and the anger, the level of anger, resentment, rage even in the country is rising and rising and rising. The way that politics functions is it becomes a bit different to how it was in the 90s, for example, in more stable times. What we're seeing now is that the state, the establishment is more prepared to act directly and intervene in the so-called democratic process in order to make sure that the right result comes out of it. I would say that another example of this can be found in the media. I certainly argue that the BBC is part of the establishment, a state-owned broadcaster, which I would say most of the time, especially in stable times on certain issues, maintains a veneer of respectable impartiality and is asking questions, holding politicians to account regardless of their political creed. But what we've seen particularly over the question of Jeremy Corbyn and that coverage of him is something a bit different, I would argue. The coverage of Corbyn has been, since he became the leader of the Labour Party, but it certainly hasn't let up during the election campaign, it's been a constant diatribe, portraying him as a terrorist sympathiser, which is quite an inflammatory headline, when a weak, indecisive, dangerous leader, somebody who wants to take the country back to the 70s, that's not actually the BBC, that was the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, somebody who the public basically can't trust, and that message, believe it or not, is seeping through at the base of society. I think this is a conscious editorial decision, frankly. There's another element to this, which is the BBC has shown quite a pro-tory bias, I would say, a bit more subtle than its anti-Corbyn bias. But in relation to the way that they deal with the Cotories, even back in the camera in Osborne days, the way that they would interview Tory politicians was extremely soft compared to the way they would deal with Corbyn and pro-Corbyn MPs, and even now that's continued. We've got a Prime Minister who is campaigning on a slogan of strong and stable leadership, often just showing in certain Labour heartlands, or former Labour heartlands, she's campaigning with a massive poster with just her face, and then the Tory symbol just maybe about this big in the corner, just going for people voting on her, having a strong hand in negotiations, you've probably heard that expression as well. So she's campaigning on decisiveness, strength, leadership qualities, and yet she's so terrified of journalists asking her difficult questions, or even easy questions, frankly, the way she performs. She's resorting to locking them in rooms, or I've heard the word cupboard used, I wasn't there, I don't know the dimensions of the room in question. She was locking up journalists until she was ready to give them three minutes, and was refusing to allow them just to film a simple, quite routine visit. It was in Cornwall, I think, I think it was a factory in Cornwall. This shows that a certain level of panic, I would say, this demonstrates that based on the very high polling, relative to Labour in particular, not just Labour in particular really, but the very high polling that the Tories have got in part, and I would say in the main down to very sympathetic treatment by the media, and the relentless campaign against Corbyn, from the media and the Tories, but from elements, quite influential elements, within his own party. They're now hoping to ride the surf on this wave, if you like, and hope that nobody gets in on the act, effectively, that nobody actually sees how inept Theresa May really is, or actually gets a glimpse of the real Tory programme. As far as I'm aware, and people can correct me in the discussion, as far as I'm aware, the Tory programme is basically strong and stable leadership. Those are the policies they're going to put into play. They're going to have strong leadership, they're going to have stable leadership, so that they can then conduct negotiations to achieve this Brexit where we leave the single market, but also get an even better deal than the single market. It sounds fantastic. She cannot be questioned on that because there's nothing beyond that. This presumably is why she's refusing to debate with anybody else. Personally, I think that's absolutely scandalous. I'll declare a prior interest as a Marxist. I've never had a huge amount of faith in the impartiality and openness of bourgeois democracy, but this is poor even by its own standards. In America you had several debates. In France you've had several debates, but in Britain, the sitting Prime Minister who is hoping for a three-figure majority and may well get it, isn't prepared to debate with other candidates. Again, you can correct me if you disagree on this, but I feel that the treatment of this scandal about the media has been a bit soft, to be honest. Surely they should be making a big deal about this, and yet they're not. I think the reason they're not is because they too are a bit worried about what would happen if they were to put her on the spot. I think she's crumpled. Now, instead, what we've got is a, can't call it a debate, I don't know what you call it, a dual interview, where the two main candidates, Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn, are going to be interviewed and asked questions separately. We'll see how that goes. That could still go wrong for her. But you can see, I would say, the establishment putting up barriers, trying to protect their candidate that they're rallying behind it, even if they don't necessarily agree with everything she says, and I hope that the national interests, the interests of British capitalism, can overall be safeguarded. And as to be said, that part of this campaign, as I've already mentioned, it's not just confined to the media and the various state institutions. There is a section of the Labour Party that's playing the same role. I would say there's a section of the Labour Party which is consciously playing this role. The so-called Blair Rights. Now, I appreciate that the Anatomy of the Labour Party is a bit more complex than just Corbyn Easters and Blair Rights. But there is, I would hope that we can all agree, there is a core of right-wing MPs who consider the eviction of Corbyn from the leadership of the Labour Party to be the most important goal, even including during a general election. I would say in support of this claim that I've seen videos, I've seen a video of John Woodcock MP saying, don't worry guys, Corbyn's not going to be the Prime Minister, but just for the record, I think he is too dangerous to be the Prime Minister. This is a Labour candidate in an election. Now less scandalous than that, there are also plenty of MPs who, I'm told, are campaigning on a purely local, on their own personal basis, if you know what I mean by that. So they're going off saying, I'm a good constituent in CMP, I'll show your views as a representative. Basically not campaigning on the policy points that Corbyn has put forward. Now I would imagine there's probably quite a few Labour MPs, right-wing Labour MPs, that aren't going to campaign on the manifesto that's just been leaked in any form. Instead they're just going to campaign on, ignore him, it's all about us. However, if it all goes the wrong way, I was going to use a different expression, but if it all goes the wrong way and Labour loses very badly, of course it will all be Corbyn's fault, he was poison on the doorstep, so on, so forth, and the media will parrot that with glee. This is something that I think we have to be alive to. There's no aspect of this for us as people who want to see the end of a Tory government. I believe that a Corbyn victory is the only way to secure that at this stage. So to move on to the most pressing question of, well, how is that even possible? How can we make this happen? It's worth first looking at what the lie of the land is so far. So we've had the local elections and what we saw in those, was it was a bad day for Labour, and we saw the Tories picking up many, many council seats, especially from UKIP. Basically, UKIP lost all of its seats but one. It actually managed to win one in Lancashire from Labour, unfortunately. But it went down from about 145 to one council seat, and almost all of that was going to the Conservative Party. And this gives us an impression of the kind of trajectory that we're seeing, that now in many cases this will be four Tory party activists, or four Tory voters to the right, even of that party, who move towards UKIP who are now coming home. But we also have to be alive to the fact, we shouldn't be complacent about this, we need to be alive to the fact that in certain areas, particularly in Labour's northern halflands, as they call them, there will be people who move from Labour to UKIP who are now considering voting Tory for a number of reasons. One, of course, is the question of Brexit, perhaps the manifesto pledge that basically the Labour Party, except an technologies Brexit, may help. But other parts of it are, first of all, the media campaign to make Corbyn out like he is basically a dangerous enemy of the state. I would imagine that's affected the way people think about it. But also there's an element of conscious cover-up, really, of Corbyn's message. I saw one statistic that claimed that only 7% of people had heard his slogan for the many, not the few, 7%. That's clearly not enough to be penetrating into the electorate. But that gives us, I would say, also a glimmer of hope, that the more people, I would argue that the more people who actually hear what Corbyn has to say and hear what policies he's putting forward, the more people are going to be considering voting for him. As long as the media and the Blair Act maintain this chorus in perfect harmony of saying he's unelectable, people don't like him, people think he's dangerous, then that almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The more his policies, which the BBC's Laura Coonsberg's article out today, said that many of the points, most of the points in the manifesto, are popular and polled well consistently. So the more those ideas are getting out to the public and the kind of the real Jeremy Corbyn, if you like, then the more we can expect to swing towards Labour. We shouldn't be deliriously expecting that it's going to be like an immense swing and that you're going to have a huge Labour majority. We do have to be realistic about this. But the predictions of a Labour landslide, I think, have been put forward so forcefully in order to make that a reality. And there's a certain amount of hoping for that to become a reality. A Tory landslide? A Tory landslide, what did I say? Did I say Labour? Sorry. My mistake. I think we can see this or the potential for this within the polling. So already we've seen the last figure I saw, and again if there are more recent figures please do jump in with them. But the last figures I saw showed a Tory majority I think it was either 14 or 16 points. It depends on where you look. Now that is very large and the Tory proportion was about 44 points. One I saw had 46, but before it was up at 48, which means the trajectory for the Tories at this point has been downward and the trajectory for Labour at this point has been upward. It's interesting that what's happened in the meantime is Theresa May has been basically running away from journalists. There was one BBC reporter who could only just manage a picture of her head above a head row as she went diving away from me. He wasn't even allowed to cross the road in order to get a better picture of her. Whilst that's been going on Corbyn has been campaigning and the Corbyn movement is beginning to get mobilised and we've seen more policy ideas coming out. I'm very interested to see what the polling figures are like next week or the next time they do after this leak. I would hope that it would reflect an increase in the proportion of Labour votes or intended votes. We'll have to see how that goes. But if that's the case, I think that should give us hope. Hope that if we get involved, if we campaign vocally for Jeremy Corbyn's ideas, but I mean more importantly and I'll go into more detail on this, for a bold, a revolutionary programme, a big overturn, a great overturn in the way that politics and society is currently run, then actually there could be a very big upset in this election. At the very least, this massive majority that the Tories are looking for could be thwarted. A big disappointment for the Tories here means that the kind of instability that we I'm sure we're all predicting for the next couple of years is still very much on the cards. I'd say that instability is still there, but of course the Tories are going to be much less well equipped to be able to deal with it if they don't have a three-figure majority. First of all, being more vocal and getting the ideas out there alone, I would say can make a dent in the Tories majority. But there's more to it than that and I think we can learn lessons from abroad in this respect. I would say that the kind of phenomenon we're seeing in Britain with the anti-establishment feeling, the move towards different forms of nationalism and chauvinism in great swathes of the population in different forms, and the general kind of rage that we are seeing in politics in Britain are certainly not a unique phenomenon. We can see them in the United States surrounding their election, and we can see them in France as well. And in both of those elections, we can also see them in other countries, but to concentrate there, in both of those elections, yes, we did see right-wing populism and nationalism gaining a much bigger echo than it had before, but we also saw left-wing candidates gaining a much, much bigger echo than they had been done before. So this is, of course, a standout example of this. Now, Bernie Sanders' programme is, if anything, to the right of Corbyn's and the lead manifesto, particularly on foreign policy. But in terms of the spectrum of American politics, he was far, far to the left. And he was coming out calling for a political revolution against the billionaire class. In America, he was talking openly about revolution. Of course, his idea of what a revolution should look like, I imagine, would be different to ours. But he was using this language and it connected, it connected particularly with the youth, and it also connected with a large, large layer of American society that felt completely left behind, disenfranchised and alienated from politics and I would say from capitalism. They may not express it like that, although many of them did, in fact. Even a certain section of Trump voters were looking in his directions, and I heard around the time of the campaign, which I'll repeat here, when Sanders was still in the running for the Democratic primaries, and Trump had already basically won the Republican one. Thousands of people there, big screen, rock music, or the whole shrewd bag, what you'd expect. And on the big screen, you had a footage of Hillary Clinton speaking, and the response from the crowd was vitriol shouting, hissing, screaming, the kind of hatred that Trump supporters showed towards Hillary throughout the whole campaign. And then a clip of Sanders came on. Sanders, of course, running for Democratic primary on a very different programme to Trump. And instead of that, you didn't quite get cheering, but you did have this begrudging silence, this kind of slightly respectful we're not sure what to think about this guy, because you cannot accuse Bernie Sanders of being a Wall Street candidate, or crooked Sanders. Those epithets simply don't make sense. Now, in France, it's an interesting fact that the FN, Front National, one of the reasons why it's gained such a big and big mass base over the last decade basically, a bit more than that, is because it's been eating up into formerly communist areas, as in voting for the Communist Party. Working class areas that, again, have felt completely abandoned by data use the language of globalisation, effectively talking about global capital, the deindustrialisation you've had in some areas, and the feeling that the whole of politics and societies run by a completely alien elite that doesn't act in their interests. And the communists, to their shame, have had nothing to say about it for all this time. I mean, there's a running theme in all of these elections, which is the kind of the failure of the cent-elect and the social democracies. And they're paying for it. In France in particular, the Socialist Party was in government. And it's paid for it, and it's austerity programme, having been elected on an anti-austerity programme, is paying for it by having their candidate get smashed in the presidential election. And now, from what I understand, the party itself has split about three ways, if it did well in the legislative elections. We're looking at the besokification, that's hard words to say. The Greek disease, if you like, of the French Socialist Party, and deservedly so. The Communist Party has been impotent throughout its entire proceedings. Meanwhile, the right is building. There's a link between these two things. But the candidacy of Jean-Luc Mélenchon cuts across that, to an extent. Clearly he didn't eliminate the foreign national presidential campaign. But he got 19%, he came within 15% of being in that second round. And I think if he got to that second round, there was a very good chance he could have won it. As it happens actually, if you'd factored, if all the people who voted for the new anti-capitalist party, and I forget the name of the other party, it was the Trotsky's party, who also stood at Candidate, if the roughly 3% of people who voted for those candidates had voted for Mélenchon, he would have got to the second round. That's a contingent factor, but what this shows is that this idea that being establishment left and being a far-left candidate is so unpalatable to the public, you could never do well. It explodes that idea, and I don't think it's just because of French conditions and French history. I think it's something that Corbyn could emulate. And one of the ways he could emulate it is by copying some of the campaign techniques and some of the messages that Mélenchon so successfully deployed. For example, Mélenchon was having huge rallies, not just of a few thousand, but over 100,000 in one case in Paris. And about it was between 70 and 80,000 of memory serves in Marseille. And Marseille happens to be a far national stronghold. It shows that you can go to places, mobilise people, get to your support together. And it's not just the Blairites say, oh, that's just talk, preaching to the converted. You'll never win round the public like that. But mobilising your support, energising them, sending them out into their communities does have an effect. I will say that the Mélenchon campaign and the Sanders campaign both demonstrate that. Mélenchon was even using holograms of himself. I don't know if that was suit Corbyn. It sounds very science fiction, so maybe he should give a go. I don't know. Either way, he was making sure that he got his face out there. That he overcame, if you like, the conscious media blockade of showing anything positive about him by basically doing his own media. And social media can play a role. I'm not one of these people who believe that social media in and of itself changes the way politics works. But I do think that one of the strengths of Corbyn during the leadership campaigns, and I would say potentially during this campaign, election campaign has been that his supporters who tend to be young, very active on social media can get the message out there very quickly and very widely, more so than relying on BBC journalists with whom you have a cozy relationship, because that's not going to happen in Corbyn's case. So these kind of campaigning techniques can help, but also, I'd say more importantly than just the techniques, we don't want this to be a purely technical discussion, is the way that the message was put across in both Sanders and Mélenchon's case. Once again, their campaigns, their policies were actually kind of different. But the way that they were talking, were talking in terms of revolution. Sanders was talking about a political revolution against the billionaire class. Mélenchon was talking about a citizens revolution. Now, you might say that's a bit of a vape. What does that mean? The meaning is different for different people. What we can say is that a large number of French people connected with that word revolution. I don't think they were connecting to the citizens part, but I do think it was the latter part, the revolution part that people were connecting to. I would say that Corbyn has to talk in these terms. I'd say that he's done a good job because campaign launch, he was saying, we don't play by the rules, the establishment are afraid of us. If I were Mike Ashley, I'd want the Tory government. I think that's a good way to begin your campaign. But I think he needs to start using the R word because that is what we need in Britain. And I think there are a great many people who do believe that to be the case. And at the moment, there'll be layers of the population who feel that to be the case and are still unsure as to whether that is what Labour represents. Now, a big part of that is for the reasons I've already explained, no-one attended, but the main message coming through, I would say, is that a fundamental root and branch change of society is needed linked to the policies he's already come out with. I think that that can mobilise even more people in the hundreds of thousands. And of course, if you get that connected to the 500,000 roughly membership of the Labour Party, pulling as much as possible in the same direction, then once again, it would be possible to achieve an upset. There's one point that I wanted to bring up early but I think it's worth bringing up now, which is a bit more of a general question about the role of individuals in history and society. I was meant to bring it up earlier. But when we look at Theresa May and the role that the establishment is playing, I think we see this in action, in living action. Theresa May has been put forward by this strongly decisive leader. That's why everyone should vote for her apparently. That's the portrayal that we're getting universally basically over the meeting. And yet we know the reality to be quite different. We can see by the way she's behaved and the examples I've already given. And the way that she's flip-flopped over so many issues, having campaigned for a main, now being a hard Brexiter, having ruled out a general election, now having slapped up a general election, that doesn't give the impression of strong, decisive leadership. And yet this is the image that's been promoted and it is an image that's been brought by many, many people. And I would say that that's not because of her own personal qualities. It's not really a reflection of her genuine strength and leadership. It's a reflection of the class forces that play. I think it's Marxist would say that ultimately history is made by men and women going about their daily lives, but the determining element is the class struggle, the social weight and social forces at play within society over a given question. And here's an example where basically the ruling class, except for a few kind of fringe elements if you like, enraged elements of the wealthy like Tony Blair, like Gina Miller who were campaigning on the Anything But Brexit programme. We can talk about them a little later. Aside from that basically the whole of the establishment is mobilising all of its social weight behind Theresa May and Billy and all of a sudden, hey presto, she starts appearing much, much stronger than she actually is. We can say however that with the experience of what happened with Trump that that can be cut across. We shouldn't be pessimistic and say whoever the media selects, whoever Murdoch selects can win because in America basically almost all of the media, massive media establishments were against Trump and he still cut through that. Now of course Trump is not the ideal candidate of backing but he was an anti-establishment candidate despite basically being a member of the establishment that managed to cut across the media. It shows it can be done. And Corbyn, the reason I bring up this question of social weight is because Corbyn also has his own social weight. I don't know if you've been looking into that so you've got to provide quite a lot of detail polling. And Corbyn, Corbyn's Labour, has the largest proportion of people under 50. Not just the youth, that's in the kind of the 18 to 30s or however you define youth, 18 to 24s. But anybody under fifth, not anybody. But the majority, the largest share, need to get my words right, the largest share of people under 50 are intending to vote Labour in this election. It's only when you get to the over 65s that Labour's vote share plummets to about 10%. This shows that if you can actually, and of course, I would say that the youth represent the future society, it's a cheesy line, but it is the truth. It shows that there is a social force there is willing to get behind Corbyn. And that if he's able to bring those into the campaign and connect to that, and I think that there are points in the manifesto that certainly have the potential to do that, then he can make a massive impact. And it's something that we should play up on in the campaign. And so in terms of the manifesto, actually there was another point that I wanted to raise about the manifesto, which is that Polly Toinby, I don't know if you're aware of who Polly Toinby is, but she stood for the Social Democratic Party in 83. So the SDP became the Lib Dems. So stood against Labour. And now has a kind of ambiguous, ambivalent relationship with Labour, where she attacks Corbyn one minute, but then she supports Labour. She described the manifesto as a cornucopia of delights. Unironically, I think. I mean, it shows the confusion on Labour right, but they kind of don't really know what to think about Corbyn at times. But it also shows that, that does reflect, I would say, that somebody who has called for Corbyn to step down, a critic of Corbyn, is saying this. I don't think she's just saying this out of party loyalty. I don't think she has a great deal of party loyalty to the Labour party. I think she's saying this because it reflects that there are meaningful policies that actually address the problems of the country. Now, we can talk about the limitations of the programme. It's certainly not a communist manifesto, which I think would be a better programme. But he's calling for the... I don't mean literally the but the communist manifesto. But he's calling for the abolition of zero-hours contracts, which I think we should all get behind. We should support to the hill. He's talking about abolishing employment tribunal fees, something that, when I was working as an employment lawyer, was a issue very close to my heart, and I think it's close to the hearts of many workers who have been oppressed and exploited in the workplace, calling for an increase in trade union representation to actually mobilise for that, and of course the abolition of anti-trade union laws. There are good policies here. It's interesting that many of those policies would be completely run-of-the-mill mainstream social democratic policies in countries like Norway. I'm saying that actually, even in relation to Labour, they're not really that radical. It's to the right of the 83 manifesto. It just shows actually what Labour manifestos have been like for the last 20 years, the ones that we have known that this comes across as so radical. So this is a message that can connect, but it can only connect if it's able to break through the blockade, if you like. And I would say it can only do that if it's done in an extremely bold and clear socialist manner. So on the question of what next, and I'll finish on this. First of all, what can we do? What can we do in the next few weeks to help mobilise for this, well, we've hoped Corbyn victory, but basically to defeat the Tories, to thwart the Tories' plan. Well, the first and most obvious thing that I'm sure you're already thinking of is we should get involved in the campaign to elect Corbyn's Labour. There are many ways you can do that. Joe already mentioned about if you put your name and details on to hear about future meetings, also put your constituency, because that means that when we as a canvas in a given area, which happens to be the same constituency as yours, we can go together, which I think would be a good thing. Also momentum of putting together lots of different ways in which you can get active. They're talking about phone banking, so you don't actually have to go and travel to a marginal seat to make an impact, which I think is a good idea. They're also talking about, it's basically a carpooling system. So if you go on their site, you can look at which marginals need people to go and when it's happening, and you can actually arrange a lift for those people. So there are plenty of opportunities, and there are plenty of opportunities around local constituencies, also an option. Now is the time that we should be getting involved in this activity. Not just making the case for Corbyn, but also explaining socialist ideas. It can be done, and it should be done. Also, another more immediate thing, is as I said, Corbyn has the largest proportion of the youth in support of him. When it comes to students, he has an absolute majority. He has 55% of students polled backing him. We, as young people and students, should be making sure that literally everybody we know is first of all registered to vote, and votes Corbyn. To make sure that that vote as much as possible can be mobilised to make a difference. This is another very simple, concrete way in which we can make a difference. But there's beyond this. Let's talk briefly about after the election. Obviously I'll start with our favoured outcome. I'll be a bit of an unlikely one, because I saw him a Corbyn majority, a Corbyn win, in which case our first priority has to be defending the Corbyn Government and his programme against the inevitable onslaught and sabotage, not just of the establishment in the capitalist class, which believe me would be even more ferocious than what we've seen already, but against a wing of his own party. Personally I believe that Corbyn were to be elected. He would struggle to apply any of the points in his manifesto, because it could section that he wouldn't let him. So we have to think already, we have to think ahead about how we can actually make that programme a reality. I would say that first of all in order to be able to carry out any of the meaningful demands in that manifesto Corbyn would have to take radical revolutionary steps against the capitalist class, against the banks, against the vested interests in order to do things like abolish the royale's contracts or reverse the privatisation of the NHS. It's not just simply a question of getting into power and then saying oh, this is what we want to do. We're talking about, it would effectively be class war in that case, in which case the Labour Party and Corbyn would have to be able to take a revolutionary stand on this. This is something that requires people within the Labour Party, the base of the Labour Party who have a marxist understanding of this question, campaigning, calling for this. Because without that section, without that base of support, then the trajectory of the party will be ever rightward. And then on the question of within the party, as I've already mentioned the Blairites would do everything in their power to including splitting the party and therefore bringing an end to this fugitive Corbyn majority. The only way that we can combat against this is by combating against Blairism and the right wing within the party. I'm not just talking about the MPs, mandatory reselection I think is something well, first of all it should be present in any democratic party structure. But also it's the only way that we can actually get the parliamentary party to correlate also beyond that. The bureaucracy, the machine of the party is totally within the hands of the right wing. Many of the people in this room know this because they've been expelled by just seeing suddenly receiving a letter saying because you sell the social appeal newspaper you're no longer eligible to be a member of the Labour Party. I very much doubt that Corbyn is personally overseeing the expulsion of left-wing activists, I'd be very disappointed if that's the case. I think it's probably people like Ian McNichol and the bureaucracy of the Labour Party. The only way to get away is by a Rootman branch movement to change the Labour Party, to transform the Labour Party. Corbyn has opened the door, but we have to push in through it as much as we can. And I think both of these points in reality apply in the event of a Tory victory. Now I don't think it would actually take all that much in such a huge impossible change in situation to thwart the Tories and either have a kind of status quo situation or worse for them. But really the purpose of this discussion I don't think is to speculate on the exact result. The point is that in the event of a Tory victory, the Blairites again will be calling for Corbyn's head saying of course he lost the election he's unelectable, he has to go, it will be chicken coo too. Now he is apparently he rode back on this so it's a bit ambiguous what he actually is going to do but he said he wouldn't step down. I would say he shouldn't step down. If Corbyn steps down before this kind of transformation of the Labour Party can take place unable to have any other kind of left wing leader ever again probably then that is basically the end of the process. I think it would be a step back for the left and a step back for the working class. It wouldn't be a final defeat of the working class by any means. There are bigger things on the horizon but it's something that we should try as we might to act against. So the same campaign against Blairites in the Labour Party which are the conscious agents of the establishment within the party in my opinion and this pushing for the application and campaigning on a revolutionary socialist basis putting forward the need not just to try and patch up the capitalist system but actually to overthrow it which is actually the only way that many of the good demands in Labour's manifesto can be put into application I would argue. This is the way that we have to act both before during and after the election and on that I think I've spoken more than long enough and I will end. Thank you.