Interview| Jeremy Corbyn: The European left failed Palestine historically
Attending ManiFiesta 2025 in Ostend was more than just being at one of Europe’s largest festivals of art and politics. Walking across the wide grounds—once a racecourse—felt like stepping from the heat of summer into an autumn gale. Winds from the North Sea carried the sound of music and debate from the festival tents, which blended into the rhythm of heavy rain falling on this small coastal city.
ManiFiesta combines manifestation and fiesta, meaning a protest festival. In an irony of history, this socialist gathering, hosted annually by the Belgian Workers’ Party, takes place on a racetrack built by King Leopold II, one of history’s most infamous colonial rulers. His atrocities in Congo, a land he held as personal property, provoked outrage that helped shape the modern human rights movement.
After struggling through the mud, cold water soaking my shoes, I finally reached Jeremy Corbyn’s tent. The former leader of the British Labour Party, now founder of Your Party, greeted me warmly. We joked about Britain’s reputation for rain, noting Belgium’s weather was hardly better.
Though the calendar still said summer, the event mixing socialism, art, and music took place under autumn skies: temperatures below 20°C and six straight hours of rain. Some wondered if the crowds came for the politics or simply for shelter.
Yet leftist movements from across Europe and beyond gathered here to forge a shared language of resistance: against war, inequality, ecological collapse, and the ascent of the far right. Palestine, however, as in every similar setting, imposed itself as the central issue. It is a cause that no longer concerns just a people seeking their fundamental right to land and life in the face of a devastating war of annihilation, but a cause for entire generations around the world.
Terrorism defended by anti-terror law
Corbyn remains a defining figure of the British left. In 2020, he was pushed out of Labour’s leadership after accusations of “downplaying” a report on antisemitism. The report identified cases but found no systemic pattern. Many, including Jewish supporters, saw this as a political attack designed to block the far left—represented by Corbyn—from leading Labour. Ironically, earlier studies had found antisemitism more common among right-wing groups.
When Corbyn learned I was Egyptian, he reflected in his calm voice on his childhood memories of Nasser, the nationalization of the Suez Canal, and the tripartite aggression that marked Britain’s colonial decline and the rise of US influence and liberation movements in the Global South. Our conversation briefly touched on contemporary issues like the Renaissance Dam and the effects of dams on soil quality.
Then, given his busy schedule, we quickly turned to the grim reality of Gaza: the rivers of blood, the famine caused by Israel’s blockade, the collapse of farming, and the suffering of more than 2 million people.
Asked about the UK’s decision to classify Palestine Action as a terrorist organization, Corbyn did not hide his anger as he recalled his warnings during debates over the Terrorism Act of 2000.
In 1999, Corbyn recalled, “when the Labour government was introducing what became the Terrorism Act 2000, I was in Parliament. And I questioned the then–Home Secretary, Jack Straw, and said, Home Secretary, is there a danger that your proposals on listing groups as being of terrorist intent will prevent peaceful demonstration and direct action, as we’ve experienced with people opposing apartheid. His reply was, ‘Absolutely not. It is in the great traditions of a democratic society that there is legitimate protest, and that is legitimate protest. The Honourable Gentleman need not worry himself about this. It will never be taken away.’”
Corbyn’s fears have been vindicated: “Now, 25 years later I’m in Parliament when exactly that happens with the prescription of Palestine Action.”
He noted the irony that during Margaret Thatcher’s years as PM, the African National Congress maintained offices in his London constituency. “London could be a place where you could have an opportunity for a conference, peace talks, discussion, intermediaries.”
Corbyn compared this to the present government, “led by a human rights lawyer apparently,” a reference to PM Keir Starmer , which “sought to prescribe Palestine Action because they had taken direct action against the planes at RAF Bryce Norton. They didn’t hurt anybody, they didn’t injure anybody. They didn’t threaten anybody and they certainly didn’t kill any children doing that. The Israeli government is the terrorist organization that is bombing Gaza.”
Since then, in just a few weeks, “over a thousand people maybe more, have been arrested as a protest over Palestine Action, which is many more times number arrested under Terrorism Act 2000 in any of the past 25 years. Many of them are retired doctors, retired judges, retired vicars. Some of them are in their 90s. So I’m appalled at the proscription of Palestine Action and I look forward to the court case which is coming up next week.”
For Corbyn, the measures designed to hurt the anti-genocide movement have had the opposite effect. “It’s brought in a whole new demographic of people who are opposed to what is happening in Palestine. At one level, it probably frightens a few people off. At another level, it shows the absurdity of the government’s position when they’re more interested in defending arms manufacturers than they are in defending human rights.”
Palestine as a unifying cause
Could Palestine anchor a new internationalism for today’s fractured left, especially amid the rise of the far right?
Corbyn believes history offers a clear precedent. “From Spain to Vietnam to Iraq, every generation of the left had a defining cause,” he said. “In the 1930s, there were two big events happening. One was when the fascists marched into Spain from North Africa, led by Franco. The Spanish Civil War followed, and eventually the fascists won. The left across Europe took up the cause of the Spanish Republic. My parents indeed met campaigning in support of the Spanish Republic. So in a sense, I was brought up with that tradition.”
Expanding on his view, Corbyn continued, “Others, in the 1940s and 1950s, were opposed to nuclear weapons, 1960s, Vietnam War, 1970s, anti-apartheid movement, 1980s, again, nuclear disarmament. Then we move on to the Gulf War, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and so on. There’s been a powerful anti-war movement, which in 2003 became a global movement against the Iraq War. Those were the causes of the time.”
Corbyn co-founded the Stop the War Coalition in 2001 and helped organize the largest protest in British history in 2003. “There are more people now doing something in support of Palestine than did even on Iraq,” he said.
But he was candid about past failures: “In 1936, the Great Arab Revolt, which was an uprising against the British mandate, against the way Britain was behaving, and against Zionist settlement in Palestine, did not gain the solidarity it should have. Nobody that I can find did anything in support of Palestine anywhere in Europe in the 1930s. The Palestinians were just ignored.”
He continued, “If one reads the debates in the British labour movement and quite probably in all the others in the 1940s about what would happen to the Palestinian people in terms of the establishment of the State of Israel and the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinians were described in the most racist language at that time. And so I think the left as a whole is going to have some sense of our own history as well. It’s not all good.”
Beyond injustice
Today Corbyn leads the Peace and Justice Project, which recently convened the Gaza Tribunal in London. Doctors and other witnesses testified about children undergoing surgery without anesthesia and patients starving to death after surviving bombings. “This is not mere injustice,” he said. “This is evil, and it must be stopped.”
He recalled visiting Gaza, the West Bank, and the Jordan Valley. “I’ve seen a lot of places, a lot of schools and so on. And I look at the destruction and I’m just angered and shocked, as the whole world has to be. But what makes me even more shocked is the lies and hypocrisy of the British government, the French government, the German government, the US government and so on. All of whom have continued normal trade with Israel, all of whom at various times supplied weapons or weapons components, all of whom have facilitated it.”
That was why, he explained, the tribunal was necessary. “For two days last week, through the Peace and Justice Project, we held the Gaza Tribunal in London. We had 29 expert witnesses over two days. And they were doctors, Dr. Nick Maynard, and so on. He just spoke about how horrific it was to be a senior surgeon operating on children without anesthetic or antiseptic. And he said it’s everything he’d been taught never to do as a doctor. He said he had to do it because it was a way of saving lives.”
Corbyn is now preparing for “a huge demonstration in London next month” as part of global solidarity with the Palestinian people. He praised the massive Sept. 7 rally in Brussels, which hosts the European Union, but doubted any EU officials had attended.
He emphasized: “Solidarity with the Palestinian people by peoples in the Middle East and North Africa is crucial and important just for their survival. So we don’t need governments being bought, like in South Sudan, to take large numbers of Palestinian people being forcibly placed there by Israel. What we need is solidarity from the peoples all over to support the Palestinian people and their right to stay in Gaza, their right to stay in Palestine and develop their own society. I’m in solidarity with them. It’s not up to me to tell them how they organize their society in the future. Solidarity is a strong word. It’s not control, it’s not patronage, it’s solidarity.”
“Your Party” for all of us
When I congratulated him on launching his new party in July, he joked: “It’s not my party. It’s your party. It’s our party.” Then he sang a line from the 1963 pop hit “It’s My Party” by Lesley Gore.
His point was clear: the party belongs to everyone, even outside the UK. “Our party is for everybody. They’re going to be Jewish, they’re going to be Hindu, they’re going to be Christian, they’re going to be Muslim, they’re going to be atheists, they’re going to be humanists, they’re going to be Black, they’re going to be white, they’re going to be Asian, they’re going to be Latin American. It’s still a British party, though. It’s based in Britain. You’ve got to base it somewhere. And I happen to live in London, that’s all it is.”
He added: “We’ve got 800,000 just about people signed up. And they are very excited. Pretty well evenly spread across the UK, they come from all backgrounds. We’re obviously surveying who they are, because we don’t know them all. And we’re doing mobilization meetings, then we’re doing what we call assemblies, regional assemblies to work out basic structures, organization ideas, culminating in a launch conference. And then the first electoral tests will be next year in the elections for local authorities in May in pretty well all the major cities in England as well as the national parliaments in Scotland and Wales.”
Corbyn’s confident vision, however, was about to be undone by a spectacular internal conflict that has left the party in disarray. Less than a week after these words were spoken, a bitter public feud erupted between Corbyn and co-leader Zarah Sultana over a paid membership portal. With Corbyn branding it an "unauthorized" and "false" system, and Sultana in turn accusing the new venture of being run by a "sexist boys' club," the clash has fractured the party before its official launch.
The fallout has been immediate, with both sides referring the matter to lawyers and the UK’s data protection watchdog, the Information Commissioner's Office, and many left-leaning supporters now expressing dismay and seeking a new political home. As of now, diplomatic efforts are reportedly underway behind the scenes to try and salvage who could be a coherent left-wing alternative.
https://youtu.be/mtCIdpnQoWk?si=_yBmbHmr0W7DPOrSTies with the Global South
Our discussion then turned to one of today’s most pressing issues: economic colonialism and global value chains that continue to exploit the peoples of the South. As an economist, I was intrigued when Corbyn proposed building commodity alliances among Global South nations, the subject of my latest Al Manassa article.
Corbyn stressed the importance of networking economically as well as politically with the Global South, and emphasized the need for real alternatives to the current approach, which treats raw materials as cheap and endlessly available commodities.
“I have made it my business to spend a lot of time and energy linking up with the social movements all over the world. And that’s why the Peace and Justice Project exists, partly, but also going back in the 1980s with Tony Benn, who founded something called the Campaign for Non-Alignment, which was about developing an alternative foreign policy. I’m also involved with Progressive International, India. I’m a member of the cabinet of Progressive International, which is the driving force behind the Hague Group—a bloc of eight nations, including South Africa and Colombia, coordinating legal and diplomatic action to defend international law and support Palestine.
Later this month, after ManiFiesta, Corbyn will visit “South Africa to meet with a lot of the NGO organizations there, and also to Namibia, partly to support South Africa on its excellent initiative in doing the ICJ case, but also to build those links.”
The Peace and Justice Project, “which we set up after I stepped down as leader of the Labour Party, is holding its international conference next weekend, in which there will be speakers either physically or online from all over the world.”
Corbyn argued that the left as a whole “needs to do two things. One is challenge the war agenda and the military agenda. Palestine, also Ukraine and so on. But also it’s the global agenda in which the industrial, predominantly northern countries, assume that the raw materials they need, be it iron ore, titanium, cobalt, lithium, whatever, is eternally going to come at a low price from the global sales.”
He urged creating “OPEC-like institutions for every single one of those commodities. OPEC changed totally the fate of the Gulf countries, for example. Sadly, it didn’t bring much democracy to the Gulf countries. But it brought wealth. It did change the dynamic of the world from patronizing racist degradation of the Middle East to now all these financiers in Frankfurt, Paris, London, Washington, New York are scared of the Gulf countries.”
As our time ended, I asked if European social movements could finally learn from the Global South, rather than the reverse. In fact there are more leftist governments in power now in Latin America and Africa than in Europe.
In response, Corbyn recommended key critical texts that uncover the deep structure of economic, political, and cultural colonialism. “I think we should make a number of books required reading,” he said. These include Walter Rodney’s “How Europe Underdeveloped Africa,” Eduardo Galeano’s “Open Veins of Latin America,” and Howard Zinn’s “A People’s History of the United States.”
He called upon the left in the Global North to show some humility and be willing to learn from the experiences of the South. “When you look at the history of colonial struggle and Kwame Nkrumah, how he mobilized the people of the then Gold Coast (Ghana) with no support from any media whatsoever. And that was done in so many other places. I think we need a bit more humility by the European and North American left to learn from the Global South.”
As he prepared to leave for another meeting, Corbyn—an avid Arsenal supporter—paused to check the result of their match against Nottingham Forest. Smiling at a 3–0 victory, he walked out renewed, carrying football joy into his heavier political struggles.