General Election 2019: Jeremy Corbyn comes to Broxtowe
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn paid a surprise visit to Broxtowe yesterday afternoon (25 November) as the Party looks to win back the key marginal seat from ex-Conservative MP Anna Soubry.
Greg Marshall
The Leader of the Opposition addressed a packed house at Beeston Rylands Community Centre before spending time with some of the centre’s regulars.
He was joined on stage by Greg Marshall, the Labour candidate for Broxtowe, who began by discussing the industrial action currently taking place at The University of Nottingham over pay and pensions. Marshall said he wanted to see an end to the marketisation of education, and said that Labour’s proposals for a National Education Service (NES) were the solution.
Corbyn picked up on the theme of education by detailing his plans for the NES, a key pillar of the Party’s manifesto which would see the introduction of “cradle-to-grave learning that is free at the point of use.”
He said: “Where are the engineers of tomorrow if we don’t invest in schools and colleges today? I want the National Education Service to be the legacy of the next Labour government in the same way that the NHS was the legacy of the 1945 Labour government.
“Education shouldn’t be bought as a commodity. We want properly funded schools and colleges.
“We’ll raise corporation tax and we’ll use the money to abolish tuition fees for all.”
The Party is proposing to increase corporation tax to 26 per cent, or 21 per cent for companies that turn over less than £300,000 per year, which it says would raise £23.7 billion over five years.
Corbyn also added that he wanted to “end the class snobbery surrounding vocational education.”
Moving on to discuss the recent industrial dispute at Royal Mail, the Labour leader criticised “the treatment of the workers by management who go after their pensions and working conditions,” before adding that he was “very proud” to 
announce that Royal Mail “will return to the public sector where it should never have left” should his Party be elected.
Corbyn then went on to outline the Party’s plans for private landlords, whom he said had “nothing to fear” from a Labour government if they “did things in the right way,” before emphasising the job-creating potential of the Party’s proposed Green New Deal and reiterating his commitment to reversing austerity measures.
After criticising Boris Johnson’s plans for a post-Brexit trade deal with the US, Corbyn concluded by saying that the first thing he would do in office would be to make sure local authorities had enough funding to end the rough sleeping crisis, before exiting the stage to a standing ovation.
