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Election 2019: reasons to be cheerful and reasons to be careful
The long-term decline in working-class political engagement is a barrier that has to be overcome, says NICK WRIGHT
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn is welcomed by Labour Party General Secretary Jennie Formby as he arrives to deliver a speech setting out the party's environment policies at Southampton Football Club in Hampshire, today

IN TWO weeks’ time, we go to the polls. It is no exaggeration to say that the outcome will shape the politics not only of the next parliament but of the next decade and beyond.

If Boris Johnson’s refashioned Tory Party gains a majority, the country will be set on a course in which a separation from the political structures of the European Union will mask a continuing convergence with the neoliberal policies which are a condition of EU membership and to which our ruling class is equally wedded.

It seems to have eluded the grasp of some on the left that the deal which Theresa May reached with the EU — and the slightly modified one which the EU reached with Johnson — are as much the property of the EU as our Tory premiers. 

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