Words matter. These are the best John McDonnell Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.
If corporations and rich people who made fortunes out of us during the boom are not paying their fair share then reform the tax system and close down the tax havens.
I do not want to be associated with those that are willing to support undermining the basic human rights that socialists have fought and sacrificed themselves to secure and protect over generations.
If we need more demand in the economy then protect people in work and raise the incomes of those on low incomes who need to spend, such as the low paid, pensioners and families with children.
The spread of information technology and the long-term decline in the cost of computing power have created opportunities that simply did not exist before. Airbnb, for example, could not have existed before the Internet.
New Labour has systematically alienated section after section of the coalition we need to win and retain power.
Leaders play an important role, but it is the Labour party’s supporters and potential supporters who should take the lead in discussing and determining the sense of purpose and direction of the party if we are to return to being a social movement aiming to transform our society.
Since John Smith’s death and the Blair/Brown takeover in 1994, party members have watched the way in which an elite leadership group has formed in the Labour party, cutting itself off from the party’s traditions, values and norms of behaviour.
The New Labour political elite has long conspired to secure a so-called ‘smooth transition’ for Blair’s successor. This would amount to little more than the imposition of a leader on the party and our supporters without any real democratic participation.
What Gramsci is all about is hegemony: you win the battle of ideas and it dominates.
I’m a Marxist.
If Marx was alive during the Stalinist period, he’d be first to be in the gulag.
No cause is worth the loss of a child’s life.
The concept of loyalty to the leader is set firmly in the ethos of the Labour party.
Out of the suffering of the 1930s, Britain built a civilising society, based in large part on the important lesson that unemployment is rarely the fault of individual malingering but the structural consequence of governments allowing the free market to rule our lives.
In 1985, as a community activist and GLC councillor, I organised the first ever public meeting to explain the threat of a third runway at Heathrow airport for my local community.
As the world changes, the way we work changes with it.
If the government is injecting public money, it should also take the right to oversee board appointments, executive pay, and future business operations.
The illegal 2003 invasion had little to do with liberating Iraqis from Saddam Hussein’s dictatorship. Instead, the real freedoms and benefits were destined to go to corporations like Halliburton and others that stood to gain from the privatisation of the formerly state-owned Iraqi economy.
The assertion that the war in Iraq has had no role in increasing the terrorist threat to Britain is clearly just intellectually unsustainable.
The decision over Heathrow expansion exemplifies the style of policy-making that starts with capitulation to a powerful self-interested lobby, blatantly fixes a public consultation and then drives through a policy that destroys any vestiges of green credentials the government had left.
Changing leaders is pointless if the same policies are pursued.
How many times have we seen politicians in office become cut off from the outside world and become unaware that the world has moved on?
My ambition is to learn to play the trombone. My wife pulls my leg about it. I’ll find time, my neighbours might not appreciate it but I’m going to try.
The Tories have made a complete mess of Brexit negotiations.
If allowed, democracy does actually work.
I call a spade a shovel, straightforward. If I disagree with someone, I tell them.
I’m from the north. You can take the boy out of the north but you can’t take the north out of the boy.
There are some lines in the sand you just do not cross. Undermining basic civil liberties by locking people up for long periods without charge is one of them.
If people need homes then put councils and building workers to work to build them, buy up the empty ones and stop the repossessions.
There’ll be creative business leaders but actually, when it comes down to it, they can’t do anything unless they’re part of a collective. Unless they’ve got that wealth creator, that engineer and that work person, that skilled person at the bench to fulfil that idea… they’re nothing.
The plundering for profit of the world’s natural resources has threatened the very sustainability of the planet.
Tightening up border and immigration controls go nowhere in addressing the underlying causes of terrorism in our society and in our world.
New Labour has deregulated, liberalised and privatised – but every time the private sector fails it is the taxpayer who pays.
The worry in Labour circles is that, when pressed, Gordon Brown instinctively moved to cut the benefits of the poor rather than upset businesses and the wealthy.
Airport expansion is just one example of how our planet is being plundered for profit.
We want to be absolutely clear to the people what we are about. No backroom deals whatsoever and we’re not going to be held back by any other political parties.
New Labour has systematically alienated section after section of our natural supporters – teachers, health workers, students, pensioners, public service workers, trade unionists and people committed to the environment, civil liberties and peace.
New Labour has created a society increasingly oppressed by the worry of personal debt.
When I had the heart attack I had one stent inserted, which was great.
Going to university is, and should be, so much more than a mechanical process of grinding out a degree qualification for a pre-determined career path.
Ministers may not be responsible for administrative errors, but they are responsible for major policy blunders.
When you talk to people about their practical life, for example when they’re at work, like the rail industry, the RMT members know better than anyone else how to run their industry.
To me, education is not a commodity. It is a public good, essential to any society with a claim to being civilised.
When I was a GLC councillor, we won and held London as Labour was imploding nationally – running popular campaigns against the Thatcher Government and fighting on our own agenda.
When I left school I went onto the shop floor, working 12-hour shifts in a TV factory. My workmates were sharp, skilled and all capable of enjoying higher education – but they didn’t have that opportunity.
Britain has moved on. It is a radically different country from that which shaped New Labour.
Very clearly, government investment can and should be used to support economic growth.
You can’t change the world through the parliamentary system.
Labour will only survive in government if we can restore the sense of mission upon which it was founded.
Heathrow expansion is an object lesson in the dominance of a rapacious sector of industry over government decision-making.
