THANK YOU to the Morning Star for giving an opportunity for all four candidates in the Labour leadership election to set out their views for the future of the party, and how we approach the difficult times faced by many across Britain.

I am writing this article in a cafe in Edinburgh at the City Arts Centre adjacent to Waverley station. As ever in August, it’s buzzing with the festival and it’s raining but no-one seems to mind.

On Thursday night we had a wonderful public meeting at the University of Dundee, which was a standing-room only event, with an overflow downstairs that was connected by loudspeakers. The audience was made up of young and old — and many who had voted Yes in the referendum, who nevertheless wanted to be able to discuss their future and the future role for the Labour Party and trade unions.

Earlier in the day we had an event attended by over 300 people at the Arts Centre in Aberdeen, which is a wonderful venue, open to all, and exuding the kind of culture policy that we really need for the whole of Britain.

Yesterday we had an event in Edinburgh and a rally in Glasgow, part of a programme of meetings and rallies we’ve been holding all over Britain. The attendance at all of them is enormous. For example, a week ago in Leeds, over 2,000 people came to the armouries for an early evening rally and they were a wonderful microcosm of the whole community.

Our campaign has two watchwords — the first is policies. We have produced a number of proposals on the economy, young people, the environment and energy, housing, defence diversification and we’ve had very interesting responses, often from very thoughtful people making considered suggestions.

The second watchword is conduct. I believe politics is reduced to a puerile level of disengagement by abuse, name-calling and character assassination.

None of it advances debate, ideas or mobilises or motivates people but merely turns them off.

We do not respond to any abuse and doggedly stick to the issues that are facing the labour movement, and of course the people of the whole of Britain. To behave otherwise is to damn the democratic nature of the process we’re currently a part of.

The key issue that brought us into this campaign was the Labour Party’s failure to offer a coherent alternative to the austerity agenda imposed in 2010, resulting in huge public-sector job losses, lower wages and living standards throughout the economy and greater inequality in Britain. It is essentially a political agenda that forces the poorest to pay for the excesses of the bankers.

The Conservatives’ latest Budget showed their true colours, as if anyone needed reminding, with a fire-sale of £30 billion of state assets

— almost double that which Margaret Thatcher achieved at the highest point in her privatisation mania — tax relief for the wealthiest through inheritance tax, a continued inability to collect large amounts of unpaid corporate taxation and, by slashing the DWP budget by £12bn, real hardship for some of the most desperate people in our society.

Our proposals are fundamentally that government has a strategic role in the good management of the economy to ensure that it works for all, with full employment, a realistic minimum wage at the TUC figure of £10 an hour, and we must establish a National Investment Bank to address the infrastructure in housing deficiencies all across Britain.

Such a bank would also invest in new industries to harness high-technology skills and increase high-quality manufacturing which is so underdeveloped in many parts of Britain.

We can and will create an environmentally sustainable economy that works for all and not just for the few but it cannot be done by leaving everything to the free market forces that have so disfigured the lives of so many people in post-industrial communities.

We have put forward proposals for a defence diversification agency so that the cancellation of Trident, which I support, will not be accompanied by huge job losses and skill losses. Instead, the agency will invest in good-quality engineering projects and jobs, with a portion of the money from Trident ringfenced to ensure that happens.

We need to live in a peaceful world and Labour has been damaged hugely by the Iraq vote in 2003 and the close relationship with US foreign policy.

The consequences of war continue for a long time and many of those very poor and desperate people in refugee camps all across the Middle East and some in camps in Calais are being described in appalling language, such as a “swarm,” by our Prime Minister. That is the language of inhumanity and abuse.

The issues are complicated and resolutions can only be found by starting from a humanitarian perspective. I’ve seen fellow human beings in trouble and we must do our best to help them and bring about the conditions so that others don’t suffer the same fate.

Whatever the result of this election, after September 12 there has to be debate on policy changes in the Labour Party and there has to be a much more democratic grassroots-up policy-making process, not one in which the leader dictates policy for the entire movement.

This is an unbelievably exciting time politically and not just in Britain, with similar activism and debate going on in many parts of Europe and with much excitement surrounding Bernie Sanders’s bid in the US.

It is showing that we can bring in lots of young and disengaged people into political activity as they come to understand the values of democracy and look to a future of decency, equality and real social justice. It is possible.

What do our panellists think? 

Dave Ward, general secretary, Communication Workers Union

I’M urging Labour Party members, party-affiliated trade unionists and registered supporters to vote for Jeremy Corbyn to be Labour Party leader.

A Corbyn victory will be a victory for every worker in this country who aspires to secure, decently paid employment, for every young person who wants an apprenticeship or further education, parents who want to bring up their children in good-quality affordable housing, older people who deserve to retire with dignity, for anyone who needs high-quality public health and transport services.

A Corbyn victory is a victory for us all. Vote with your heart and your head — vote Corbyn.

Ronnie Draper, general secretary, Bakers and Allied Food Workers Union

HAVING read Jeremy Corbyn’s article I felt a warm glow flooding through my veins as I recognised his passion for delivering fairness to the most disadvantaged in our society.

I don’t believe it is a right-versus-left argument, more a right-versus-wrong one. Where Corbyn differs from the other three candidates is that he is capturing the imagination of the masses by talking the politics of the public.

Believe me, this is not election manifesto rhetoric — this is an honest appraisal of Corbyn’s heartfelt, lifelong values.

He embraces young and old alike with a message of hope that can become a reality and that is why he speaks to packed houses.

I believe Corbyn is the person to lead the Labour Party back to being the true party of the people and that is why I shall be voting for him — and I recommend other party members do the same.

Kate Hudson, general secretary, Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament

JEREMY CORBYN has consistently put forward a vision of Britain playing a positive role in a more peaceful world, so it’s unsurprising that he has made this such a central theme in his leadership campaign.

Whether the issue is Trident, Iraq or Syria, Corbyn has often found himself at odds with the Labour Party establishment but standing shoulder to shoulder with public opinion. Committing to scrapping Trident and spending the £100 billion elsewhere will not only make the world more peaceful but will contribute towards a sustainable economic future for Britain.

While his three rivals scramble to justify their past voting records in support of British military interventions and their commitment to weapons of mass destruction, Corbyn continues to pursue a different path.

It is little surprise that so many people, especially those who have been turned off politics for so long, want to join him.

Anita Wright, president, National Assembly of Women

JEREMY CORBYN says it was the failure of the Labour Party to offer a coherent alternative to the austerity agenda that brought him into the leadership campaign — it was also why Labour lost the general election.

Corbyn’s policies set him apart from the other candidates, particularly his views on foreign policy, Trident and the strategic role of the state in controlling the free market, and place him firmly on the side of ordinary women and men who are being made to pay for the economic mess created by the bankers and the richest in our society. His vision raises expectations that peace, equality and justice can become a reality.

If elected, he will need to continue to work closely with those in the Labour Party who share this vision and the wider trade union and democratic movement because he will face huge opposition from the most powerful, self-interested elements in our society.

Ian Davidson, former Labour MP for Glasgow South West

THE campaign to elect Jeremy Corbyn as Labour Party leader is electrifying political debate in Scotland and mobilising unprecedented numbers to join, discuss and participate.

It has provoked a fervour which has not only swept aside New Labour’s acceptance of the neoliberal economic consensus and the defence assumptions of the cold war but also the sterile dead-end of constitutional wrangling.

People in Scotland are realising, and welcoming, that a Labour Party led by Corbyn will offer political, economic and social alternatives which can meet their aspirations for a better life, not only for themselves and their families, but also for their communities and their country.

New generations are being brought into a campaign driven by ideas rather than personalities, while those previously involved but who gave up on Labour because they saw New Labour as giving up on them, are being drawn back by a modern application of Labour’s everlasting principles and ideals.

The campaign with Corbyn recognises the discontent that led many to apathy, or to blame “others” for our problems. It offers the best hope of capturing and channelling both resentment and aspiration into a positive thrust for change.

Ben Chacko, editor, Morning Star

I’LL let you in on a secret — the Morning Star was supporting Jeremy Corbyn’s bid for the Labour leadership before we read today’s inspiring article, indeed before he even secured the nominations to stand.

Jeremy’s record on supporting workers in struggle and campaigning against war and injustice is unsurpassed, and we’re proud that he has written over 500 articles for the people’s paper over the last decade and more, in the weekly column he took over from another great socialist — the late Tony Benn.

The Islington North MP merits the backing of everyone who wants to see an end to decades of dead-end Thatcherism that have trashed workers’ rights, flogged off our public assets and undermined or sold our public services.

He deserves our trust not because of a polished pitch for our support like those of the other candidates — but because he has shown by years of principled activism that he is prepared to fight for peace and socialism.