Clive Lewis Quotes

The 2017 general election showed how quickly support can skyrocket.

I’m known for wearing tweed jackets, khaki pants and suede shoes. I’ve only worn a suit in parliament under duress, when I was on the front bench.

In his 40s, my dad refound his youth a bit, and started going to the West Indian club in Northampton, where I’m from, where the West Indian diaspora would go to socialise on a Friday night, and have a drink and a dance to soca and the like.

My feminist values are rooted in my socialist values. The number of women CEOs in Britain’s biggest companies is irrelevant if they pay their women workers poverty wages or discriminate against black employees.

The creation of millions of secure, well-paid jobs must be at the forefront of any Green Industrial Revolution.

Climate change is a humongous challenge but it also presents numerous economic opportunities.

In a liberal democracy rapid, radical and fundamental economic change must benefit the many not the few, if it is to gain popular, long-term political support.

In politics, sometimes, you dig your heels in and draw a line in the sand and refuse to compromise.

The British public deserve real choices not forced, technocratic arguments about variations of the same dead end arguments.

Putting a credible form of Brexit to the people and offering Remain as an alternative will give Labour the chance to unite as a party.

With its brutal empire and legalised slavery, the Roman Republic was hardly a towering beacon of progressive values.

We can’t grow as a party, if we’re afraid of having difficult conversations.

As an MP, it is my job to hold the government to account.

Serving your country in the U.S. brings not just peer respect but also the chance to learn new skills and receive a college education. The U.K.’s armed forces offer a similar deal.

The U.K. could become a global leader in decommissioning skills and technology as we move to a net-zero-carbon economy.

I know what it’s like to feel the fear of battle. To be constantly looking over my shoulder and thinking every sound might be a bomb or a bullet. When I served in Afghanistan in 2009 I felt that fear, but I made a choice to serve in the army and I knew I could come home to safety at the end of my tour.

Labour needs to lead – lead on Brexit, lead in Europe, lead for the people.

Billionaire’s shouldn’t exist.

Labour has a complex history with racism and internationalism. Political education about antisemitism and all forms of racism can help us reckon with that history, and ensure a socialist politics based on real equality becomes the common sense across the party.

Leadership and punching above your weight doesn’t necessarily always have to mean gunboat diplomacy and bombing other countries into the stone age. It can actually mean leading by example, and helping other countries.

It’s sad to say, but the story of Royal Mail’s privatisation is a story of our times: the loss of democratic control; the transfer of wealth and power to the richest in society; and the growing pressure on working people to work harder and faster for less.

My vision for the country is of warmth and energy. A country that starts every conversation and every project – either in business or politics – with a belief in the best in people. This is the hopeful creed of a 21st-century socialism.

Most Labour members are genuine anti-racists who oppose antisemitism.

We were the first country in the world to carbonise our economy and to reap the huge economic rewards that followed and it is right that we now invest some of that wealth in fully decarbonising.

Political status does not necessarily depend on nuclear capability.

In the U.S., requiring voters to produce photo ID in order to vote is just part of a much wider and more open system of discrimination against poor and ethnic minority voters.

Boris Johnson tried to prorogue parliament to get his disaster of a Brexit through, bringing hundreds of thousands out onto the streets for the ‘Stop The Coup’ protests, and seeing his cynical strategy overturned by the Supreme Court in the process.

During his time at BHS, Sir Philip Green treated the company as his own personal plaything. Instead of investing in its branches and developing its brand, he ran down the pension scheme and used the company to line his own pockets.

The only time that Labour has convincingly come from opposition to win has been in 1997 in the post-war period. And to do that we had to tack quite substantially to the right.

The U.K. government faces three choices to deal with carbon-heavy fossil fuels: force people to stop using them immediately; facilitate a rapid transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy; or hope business-as-usual market forces solve our problem for us.

Many of us mistakenly believe a coup d’etat is the only kind of coup possible. But a coup doesn’t always require tanks on a lawn and senior ranking military types appearing on your TV and radio declaring that democracy as you knew it, is now over.

Frankly, I want to be in government with Caroline Lucas, not against her – and certainly not in permanent opposition.

I’m fed up with the top-down style of politics, where discussion in our party is stifled because of sectarianism and tribalism.

Good businesses are the lifeblood of the economy. But, as responsible business people up and down the country know, the system too often allows good businesses to be undercut by bad.

It’s obvious the Green Industrial Revolution will challenge orthodox political and economic thinking. That requires bravery from both politicians and electorates.

There is nothing efficient about firms spurning more productive technologies because years of unrelenting attacks on social safety nets and collective bargaining have created cheap labour in abundance.

Such is the sense of entitlement of Boris Johnson and his establishment class – they believe they can break the law without the consequences meeting ordinary people.

I would like the Labour Party to issue a pamphlet to all its members explaining what antisemitism is. The pamphlet could go through each way that antisemitism manifests itself, point by point, explaining what each means.

A lot of people would like to see the monarchy scaled down.

I’m in favour of more democracy – let the British public decide what the future of the monarchy is and what shape it should be.

The top-down, vertical power relationships of the past are being replaced by a more evenly distributed, bottom-up variety.

Climate change is an existential threat to our economy, and ultimately to civilisation as we know it.

The genius of the market is supposed to lie in its ability to allocate society’s resources to their most efficient uses without central direction. Labour has long recognised that efficiency doesn’t always correspond with what is socially optimal or, in other words, ‘fair.’

Heathrow is conveniently located for airlines to shuttle the global elite between different routes. These flights disturb the peace of millions, disrupting lessons across west London and dumping toxic gases on people living around the airport. Their passengers don’t pay a penny in taxes.

I’d rather see us as citizens than subjects in the 21st Century.

Central to being a humanist, which I am, is the core understanding that doubt and criticism are essential attributes in the quest for knowledge.

Poor people don’t drive the toxic form of economic ‘growth’ that is destroying our environment.

On everything from climate change to the housing crisis, we need solutions that are credible, bold and radical.

Changes that are being enhanced by technological innovation (social media being a case in point) are happening at an increasing rate.

We know growing technological developments in artificial intelligence, automation and big data mean that democratic socialism in the 21st century must adapt to such a rapidly changing world.