The British Labour Party's new leader Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday called for an "end to injustice" in Britain, accusing Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative government of creating poverty. In his first speech as leader at the party's annual conference in Brighton, Corbyn said he wanted "a kinder politics, a more caring society".
"We're going to put these values back into the heart of politics in this country," said the 66-year-old left-winger, whose landslide victory in a party election this month took observers by surprise. "Under my leadership, Labour will be challenging austerity. It will be unapologetic about reforming our economy to challenge inequality and protect workers better," Corbyn told cheering delegates.
"The Tory austerity is the outdated and throroughly failed approach of the past," Corbyn said, accusing the Conservatives of telling a "lie" by saying that they were on the side of British workers. He also accused the Conservatives of working for wealthy donors, saying: "That's why this pre-paid government came into being, to protect the few." Corbyn also urged Cameron to take a stronger line on international human rights and to call on Saudi Arabia to stop the execution of a Shiite youth accused of taking part in pro-reform protests.
"A refusal to stand up is the kind of thing that really damages Britain's standing in the world," he said, adding that Cameron should cancel a British bid to provide prison services in Saudi Arabia. Corbyn, a long-time pacifist and anti-nuclear campaigner, also reiterated his staunch opposition to Trident, Britain's nuclear-armed submarine system - a highly divisive issue within his own party. The new leader was a co-founder of the Stop the War coalition and organised Britain's largest ever demonstration in 2003 under former prime minister Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War. "It didn't help our national security when we went to war with Iraq in defiance of the United Nations and on a false prospectus," he told the conference.