Jeremy Corbyn launches Labour’s election manifesto — live updates
Jeremy Corbyn will pitch himself as Britain’s answer to Franklin D. Roosevelt in his manifesto launch speech later, asking people to judge his policies by how much the rich dislike them.Seeking to liken his party’s policies to Roosevelt’s New Deal program of social reforms during the Great Depression, Corbyn will tell a crowd in Birmingham: “This is a manifesto of hope. A manifesto that will bring real change. A manifesto full of popular policies that the political establishment has blocked for a generation.””The US president who led his country out of the Great Depression, President Franklin Roosevelt, had to take on the rich and powerful in America to do it. That’s why he said: ‘They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred,'” Corbyn will add, according to excerpts of his speech already released to the media.“He knew that when you’re serious about real change, those who profit from a rigged system, who squirrel away the wealth created by millions of people, won’t give up without a fight. So I accept the implacable opposition and hostility of the rich and powerful is inevitable,” Corbyn will add.The Labour leader’s confrontational tone against Britain’s wealthiest has already become a hallmark of his campaign, and the wartime President is a natural role model for Corbyn to seek to compare himself; FDR’s ambitious reforms included a swathe of tougher banking regulations alongside spending boosts and public work projects.Here’s a few more key lines from Corbyn’s speech, expected in less than half an hour:“If the bankers, billionaires and the establishment thought we represented politics as usual, that we could be bought off, that nothing was really going to change, they wouldn’t attack us so ferociously. Why bother?”But they know we mean what we say. They know we will deliver our plans, which is why they want to stop us being elected.”