Former Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders gives the thumbs up Corbyn a week ahead of election day
IT APPEARS THAT EVEN JEREMY CORBYN is ‘feeling the Bern’. The UK Labour party leader has received an important boost from the Vermont senator and leading American progressive Bernie Sanders, who faced off against Hillary Clinton in the Democratic party primaries last year.
At the Brighton Festival, yesterday (Thursday 1 June), he praised Jeremy Corbyn for going “to the grassroots” to transform his party ahead of the UK General Election on 8 June.
He pointed to Corbyn’s emphasis on class, an issue he said so many “wanted to ignore” as a reason for his confidence in Corbyn’s transformation of Labour and UK politics. This, he said, showed similarities to his own campaign which took on the high powered and financed campaign of the Clinton political dynasty with its connections to banking and party apparatchiks.
The Vermont senator who narrowly lost to the eventual presidential nominee and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton added that he had been “very impressed” by Corbyn’s campaign but declined to give an official endorsement.
Sanders said: “Too many people run away from the grotesque levels of income and wealth inequality that exist in the United States, the U.K. and all over the world,” said Sanders. “We will never make the kind of changes we need unless we take on the levels of inequality that exist.”
The senator is on a three-day speaking tour in the UK after completing a tour to Berlin.
He is speaking at a sold-out event in London today (Friday 2 June) and will travel to Dublin for a talk on Sunday (4 June).
Picture courtesy of Scott P
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