Top 55 Owen Jones Quotes

For years, media moguls and campaigns bankrolled by the rich have fed the lie that migrants are the cause of injustices propagated by the powerful: the failure to build housing, the strain on public services by cuts, the lack of secure jobs, the decline in real wages.

But a rejection of freedom of movement within Europe’s own boundaries does not strengthen the case for accepting more migrants and refugees from outside: the reverse, in fact.

Philanthropists decide how to spend their money based on their own personal whims, rather than what is best for the social good.

One of the greatest own goals in modern British political history helped create one of the biggest political parties in the western world, but one committed to socialism rather than rehashed Blairite triangulation.

In the 00s, it was often claimed that political apathy had replaced political participation. Membership of political parties and electoral turnout were both said to be in irreversible decline.

Capitalism has proved its ability to adapt: at a time when so many younger people quite legitimately feel that the economic system doesn’t work for them, big business appealing to their sense of idealism is a savvy move.

Donald Trump’s mini-me, Boris Johnson, is in the ascendant: the Tory crown is his to lose. But his colleagues know he’s an incompetent, a man who cares only for himself, who was fired twice – by a newspaper editor and a party leader – over allegations of dishonesty.

A society should be judged by how it treats its children. A country that fails to invest in its children is imperilling its future.

Being on the left is supposed to be about unbounded optimism, a belief that what is deemed politically impossible by the ‘sensible grownups’ of politics can be realised, with sufficient imagination and determination.

The left’s mission isn’t simply to grant every citizen the basic means of survival, but comfort and prosperity, too, through collective means. Yet the existence of billionaires is irreconcilable with this emancipatory project.

A desire for social connection is fundamentally hardwired into our psychology, and so being deprived of it has devastating mental and physical consequences. Yet we live in a society which has become ever more fragmented and atomised.

Having some form of structure to process and manage grief collectively surely helps: as someone put it to me, grief is like a landscape without a map. Another suggested that grief makes you a stranger to yourself.

Our social model means economic growth all too often involves concentrating wealth produced by the many into the bank accounts of the few, without improving the lives of the majority.

The vast majority of people back higher taxes on the rich. Yet these are fringe ideas within most of the mainstream media, which marginalises those who support them.

The decision on how philanthropic money is spent is made on the whims and personal interests of the wealthy, rather than what is best.

But surely no company is going to launch an advertising campaign if it thinks it will lose money; therefore, by definition, any social justice-orientated marketing is driven primarily by money, not advancing the cause of human progress.

Austerity is literally a matter of life and death. Unless it is stopped, lives will continue to be unnecessarily shortened.

Democracy is a bundle of rights and freedoms wrestled from the powerful. Our rulers only surrender their power when compelled to – when the cost of resisting pressure from below becomes greater than the cost of giving ground to it.

Yes, there is some evidence that migration can slightly depress wages at the bottom end of the labour market, but that’s an argument for a genuine living wage, for ensuring all workers are employed on the same terms and conditions, and for extending unionisation.

The liberation of workers from excessive work was one of the pioneering demands of the labour movement.

Private schools do confer other advantages, of course: whether it be networks, or a sense of confidence that can shade into a poisonous sense of social superiority.

But cutting the working week would free the individual, giving millions of workers more time to spend as they see fit. Human freedom should be the core aim of modern socialism. The right to work less would be an act of liberation – and a cause the left should embrace.

Turkey’s regime is fast degenerating into outright dictatorship, emboldened by the imminent ascent of Donald Trump to the most powerful position on Earth.

A huge portion of our lives involves the surrender of our freedom and personal autonomy. It is time in which we are directed by the needs and whims of others, and denied the right to make our own choices.

We recognise that, like us, other humans have insecurities and ambitions; we fall in love and have relationships that end in heartbreak; we worry about our children’s wellbeing; we say things we regret; we’re occasionally kept awake by fears or worries; and we try to impress people we look up to.

Freedom of movement in Europe has been all but abandoned as a cause in British politics. Brexit was far more about freedom of movement than our exact trading relationship with the EU, and the electorate rejected it.

We should all expect to be able to die with comfort, dignity and love. Our society does not lack the wealth to realise this aspiration, but the willpower.

Genuine democracy is frequently messy, not stage-managed.

What do we value more: an economic system which privileges profit above all other considerations, or the continued existence of human civilisation as we recognise it? A reckoning is coming.

Grief is like wandering through a minefield, as my mother puts it: however carefully you tread, a sudden detonation can happen out of nowhere. A song played in a supermarket; an overheard phrase; someone in the distance who your mind cruelly suggests is your loved one for a fleeting moment.

Neoliberalism has left Britain’s boss classes drunk on triumphalism, paying themselves record salaries and bonuses while their workers are imprisoned by poverty and insecurity. It was never going to last.

Because so many employers refuse to pay their workers a wage on which they can live – most Britons languishing below the poverty line are in work – the state has to spend billions of pounds a year on in-work benefits.

In the 1920s prohibition in the US notoriously failed to tackle alcohol use, led to lethal forms of liquor entering the black market, fuelled organised crime and its associated violence, and wasted public money.

Yet we have learned from the Scottish independence vote and with Brexit what referendums do to our politics. They foster bitter divisions in ways that parliamentary elections tend not to do.

Tuition fees have formed part of a full-frontal assault on the living standards of a generation battered by a housing crisis, stagnating wages and slashed services.

If sharp-elbowed parents are no longer able to buy themselves out of state education, they are incentivised to improve their local schools.

Poverty damages the educational potential of children, whether through stress or poor diet, while overcrowded, poor-quality housing has the same impact too.

If you’ve never lived outside London, and if you’ve always had a car, it’s difficult to understand how dire bus services undermine your standard of living: from being able to get to work, meet friends in the pub, get the weekly shop or take the kids on a day out.

Labour’s mission is to democratise Britain: but first, it must surely democratise itself.

David Cameron set impossible targets and relentlessly portrayed immigration as a social burden while pursuing an economic strategy that suppressed wages. It did not end well for him, nor, more importantly, for the country.

My dad saw himself as part of a historic struggle for human liberation: he met my mum canvassing for the Labour party in a snowstorm in Tooting, he helped lead strikes, and recruited miners to socialism.

If only Brexit would go away. It sucks the political oxygen away from the issues we should all be discussing: like low wages, insecure jobs and the housing crisis.

We need global tax justice, not charitable scraps dictated by the fancies of the elite.

In a society rigged in favour of landlords over tenants, to rent privately is to be deprived of security.

If you live in London, where politicians and media commentators spend most of their time, you are spoilt for transport choices – trains, an extensive underground network and a regular bus service.

Modern capitalism is based on a myth: that thriving private entrepreneurs generate wealth through their own hard work, innovation and get-up-and-go.

Brands are increasingly flirting with the realm of politics.

Britain’s police force is institutionally racist. This was the judgement of the 1999 Macpherson report, and it remains the case.

So much of our lives is surrendered to subordinating ourselves to the needs and whims of others, turning human beings into cash cows rather than independent, well-rounded individuals.

A flourishing, diverse media is essential to a functioning democracy.

Political reporting is too often trivialised, treated as a soap opera based in Westminster, rather than placed in a broader social or economic context.

If you are dim but have rich parents, a life of comfort, affluence and power is almost inevitable – while the bright but poor are systematically robbed of their potential.