Jeremy Corbyn: EU support for austerity opens door to far right

Jeremy Corbyn urged Europe’s Socialists Friday to challenge the political establishment and team up with like-minded leftists to check the rise of “fake” right-wing populists.

EU support for austerity and failed neoliberal policies have caused serious hardship for working people across Europe,” Corbyn said in a speech to the annual congress of the Party of European Socialists in Lisbon.

It had “damaged the credibility of European social democratic parties and played a significant role in the vote for Brexit.

He added that Europe must come together to fight against the rise of right-wing and neoliberal policies. Failing to do so “will smooth the path to power of the fake populists,” Corbyn said in a speech to the annual congress of the Party of European Socialists in Lisbon.

“The stakes could not be higher. If we cannot rise to the task, then we will smooth the path to power of the fake populists,” Mr Corbyn said.

“The far-right feeds on fears fuelled by falling living standards, damaged communities, insecure work and underfunded public services. It diverts the blame away from the powerful few responsible for economic and social failure and onto minorities.

Mr Corbyn added:

“Inside or outside the European Union we are internationalists to our very core.”

“As socialists and trade unionists, we will work together to help build a real social Europe: a people’s Europe, a socialist Europe, that will strengthen solidarity across borders, resist the race to the bottom in rights and protections and work together to extend them for all workers, consumers and our environment.”

Far-right anti-immigration forces have been on the rise in Europe in recent years, coming to power in Italy, Austria, Hungary and Poland, gaining clout in Germany and France, and scoring their first success in Spain on Sunday.

If the European political establishment carries on with business as usual, the fake populists of the far right will fill the vacuum,” Corbyn said.

He called on left-leaning leaders to work together as they do in Portugal where the minority Socialist government is backed in parliament by the two far-left parties.

We defeat the Far right with our solidarity across the whole continent as well as in our own countries. There is no solution offered by the far right that will help anyone that is poor, anyone, up against it or any community that is left behind.

You only deal with those problems by Socialism by socialist policies and by investment in people. You don’t sort out these problems by blaming vulnerable minorities and setting of a whole tide of hate against people who themselves are very, very vulnerable.

Corbyn talked of the Brexit voting Labour Heartlands how European Union support for austerity and failed neoliberal policies had caused serious hardship for working people across Europe, its damaged the European social model and European social parties and played a significant role in the vote for Brexit in Britain.

Corbyn explains how he voted to remain and reform but asks the European Socialist to understand that Socialist who voted to leave voted in part because they were damaged communities that had lost their Industries and had been left behind, they were angry at the economic failure to provide hope, particularly for the younger generation.

Speaking just ahead of a Dec. 11 British parliament vote on Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan, Corbyn reiterated that Labour felt the deal should be rejected while a better one, ideally for a long-term customs union with the EU, remained possible. “We think the deal she brought back is not acceptable,” he told reporters earlier. “It pleases nobody.”

“First thing is to oppose this deal, get the government to negotiate a better deal along the lines we set out and if they can’t do that they should resign and we have a general election.”