Socialists From England

"We need to secure resources for large-scale economic transformational change. That can be achieved by a government committed to subordinating markets in money, goods and services to regulatory democracy – in other words, to the interests of the democratic societies and the ecosystems in which they operate. 'Free-market' neoliberal economic policies that detach markets from society's oversight achieve the reverse. They are designed to subject markets to private, not public, democratic authority."

"Pro-European is who we are and who we have always been. Our members are Remain. Our values are Remain. Our hearts are Remain."

"The only way to break the Brexit deadlock once and for all is a public vote in a referendum,"

"I feel great. I feel absolutely fantastic. Chilled out, I feel like my IQ has gone up. I feel younger. It's a great feeling."

"The EU invests £11bn a year on manufacturing innovation programmes of which 15% are invested here in the UK."

"[Labour is] clear that Britain is better off in Europe"

"And you know, woe betide politicians that don't listen to what voters tell them. You know, I think a future Europe will have to look at things like the free movement of labour rules."

"We can't say to people 'Labour wants you to share in the running of your workplace, your community and your environment, but we don't trust you to have the final say over Brexit.'"

"I'd like them to vote Remain, but that's part of the debate we've got to have"

"I think he's reckless and I think he's unstable and I will move heaven and Earth to stop a no-deal Brexit."

"My view is that you'd put the deal to the people, but you'd have to also have the option of the status quo. Deep in my heart, I'm still a Remainer, but I've got to try and bring together effectively what is a British compromise."

"John McDonnell, the nearest to a hero in both books. McDonnell worked tirelessly and pragmatically. He wanted to win, knowing that unity and a semblance of coherence were fundamental preconditions for victory. He kept up a dialogue with the so-called moderates and spoke out publicly on both anti-Semitism and the Salisbury poisonings, to the point where he and Corbyn did not talk for several months."

"There are enough sensible people in the House of Commons to say 'this cannot happen, we cannot damage our country in this way'."

"If the government says 'well a customs union for a couple of years or maybe customs union until we decide there won't be one,' well actually, that doesn't give the stability for investment for anyone"

"That has been our objective since immediately after the referendum. The structures - whether we are in or out - are a secondary matter. We are not ruling anything out but what we are saying is that we are the fifth largest economy in the world and we have a special status in both our relationship with the EU and the rest of the globe and we feel we can get a deal that achieves tariff-free access."

"This means we must not try to re-fight the referendum or push for a second vote and if Article 50 needs to be triggered in Parliament Labour will not seek to block or delay it."

"We will be cut off from our biggest trading partner. We will be cut off from the skills and contribution that EU nationals have made to our economy and society."

"My fear is that if we did have another referendum, we might get the same or similar result and the country will still be divided. Somehow we have got to try and bring the country back together again."

"Our objective is tariff-free access to the market"

"I think people out there in the real world, our constituents, just want us to get on with the job of getting the best deal possible for them"

"We have to respect the decision that was made in the referendum ... otherwise, to be frank, we undermine all confidence in our democratic process."

"We voted for the implementation of Article 50 because we respect the referendum result. But we cannot have this situation where government becomes unaccountable on the implementation of one of the most important decisions for a generation."

"When Britain leaves the European Union, free movement of labour and people will then come to an end"

"It's time to turn this debate around, drive out politics of despair and offer a vision for Britain in Europe."

"Therefore now in the national interest we have got to come together and secure a compromise. If we can't do that, well yes, we have to go back to the people."

"I would swim through vomit to vote against this bill. And listening to some of the nauseating speeches in support of it, I might have to."

"Inevitably in this century we will have open borders. We are seeing it in Europe already. The movement of peoples across the globe will mean that borders are almost going to become irrelevant by the end of this century so we should be preparing for that and explaining why people move."

"We should not pretend the referendum result can be undone."

"It's about time we started honouring those people involved in the armed struggle. It was the bombs and bullets and sacrifice made by the likes of Bobby Sands that brought Britain to the negotiating table. The peace we have now is due to the action of the IRA."

"If Jeremy got hit by the No 57 bus, or whatever it is, there's the next generation coming through. And the reality is the next leader should be a woman. It's high time to have a woman."

"[he would be glad to] go back to the 1980s and assassinate Thatcher."

"We've got to eradicate anti-Semitism, anti-Jewish racism in all its forms [and] for us to address that now, I think he needs to take a personal lead on examining those cases and if necessary, recommend it to our NEC (National Executive Committee) what needs to be done."

"I was up in Liverpool a fortnight ago where Alec McFadden, one of our organisers, launched the Sack Esther McVey Day, on her birthday. There was a whole group in the audience that completely kicked off quite critical of the whole concept, because they were arguing "Why are we sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the bastard?""

"The values of Catholicism are the inherent values of the Labour Party and the inherent values of socialism..."

"Just as Oliver Cromwell aimed to bring about the kingdom of God on earth and founded the British Empire, so Bunyan wanted the millennium and got the novel."

"Lesser historians, timid or inhibited, aimed at correctness; Hill had wider ends to serve. He has served that cause with more profound influence on his time than any of his peers. Among the English Marxist historians, that galaxy of talent from the 1960s, Hill was and is a prince of academe... Now that Marxism can no longer harm, the point is not to refute Hill but to appreciate him. Every scrap of his writing is to be treasured; every essay, every review overflows with historical skill. Every part of his work includes the whole. This collection of studies focuses on crime, and crime seen from the viewpoint of the ordinary man as social protest. This thesis is not new: its classic formulation was by E. P. Thompson 20 years ago. Nor am I more persuaded now than I was then: it strikes me as an Alice in Wonderland vision in which all the criminals are victims and all their victims become criminals. I am not persuaded that "the land-less" were "the law-less". Court records show that the poor are the chief victims of crime, however much Hill's literary sources romanticise criminals as Robin Hoods. Yet this hardly seems to matter beside the learning and deftness with which Hill makes his theme so fascinating."

"Most men and women of the seventeenth century Britain still lived in a world of magic, in which God and the devil intervened daily, a world of witches, fairies, and charms. If they failed, the royal touch would cure scrofula."

"Only very slowly and late have men come to realize that unless freedom is universal it is only extended privilege."

"Hey there, fuck-face!"

"Tolerance is not a virtue"

"Dickheads who couldn’t hold their beer and needed to get home to Cheshire"

"I’m much more left now, though. I think Stalin had the right idea. Take one out of five fucking newspaper editors, and MPs, and shoot them. Then they’d buck up."

"The last time it happened to me it was because by mistake I blundered into a pub next to a Pixies concert in the summer. Fucking hell. I was just walking down and I was going to meet a fella about some business and I wanted a nice empty pub. I got to the pub and it was fucking jam-packed with all these Pixies fans who wanted selfies. I am totally oblivious to these things but it turns out the Pixies cover one of our songs. I never liked the Pixies but all these fans wanted pictures. It’s just fucking weird."

"Brooklyn Vegan, 26 June 2006"

"I was in Cardiff recently. You should see the shops there. They’re fantastic. I had this breakfast in Cardiff; I could have eaten it every day. All the food was great. Manchester – the food, the shops – has always been crap."

"Going to Glastonbury is so clichéd isn’t it...I’ve seen it with groups once they get a scent of fame. He’s been waiting 25 years for it. He’s got aftershave on. It’s like Ed Sheeran. I think Sheeran and Corbyn are evil twins. See Corbyn in Europe the other day? He’s started wearing what they’ve asked him to. He’s like ‘oh it’s my first hit record’. He’s turned into Rod Stewart."

"He's a twat"

"Soft lads who blab"

"There was always privilege in music, it was always like that, but nowadays you don’t have a chance in hell. Why Blunt would talk about it I don’t know but that’s what I’m saying. He’s looked at them cutting the army back, he’s in a tank and he’s gone to Daddy, ‘What shall I do?’ In the past it would have been ‘stick at it’, now his Dad is telling him to be a jazz singer. Imagine him as a tank commander, I’d shit myself."

"We were playing a festival in Dublin the other week. There was this other group like, warming up in the next sort of chalet, and they were terrible. I said 'shut them cunts up' and they were still warming up, so I threw a bottle at them. The bands said 'that's the Sons of Mumford' or something, 'they're number five in charts!' I just thought they were a load of retarded Irish folk singers."