Emily Thornberry

Politician

1960-07-27

Quotes by Emily Thornberry

• It's often been said that politics in Islington, in many ways, begins and ends with housing, and it's not hard to see why. Despite the borough's image of exclusivity - the stereotype that it's all Georgian squares and cappuccino bars - the reality is much more complex.

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• We have all these strong men in politics - whether it's Brazil, or the Philippines, or Trump, or Putin. They're all big men: it's let's look up to them, don't be afraid, they're looking after things. It's so fundamentally anti-democratic.

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• The Human Rights Act is not a terrorists' charter. It enables ordinary citizens to seek redress when the government breaches fundamental freedoms enshrined in the European Convention on Human Rights such as the right to a fair trial, the right to life and free expression.

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• It is my view that our response to the Brexit vote should not have been to turn in on ourselves. At a time of grave constitutional and economic challenge for our country, it was incumbent on us to rise to this threat and ensure that the Labour party should defend the interests of our communities and not allow the Tories a free hand.

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• There was a time when a certain type of Tory could have been relied on to swing from the chandeliers in defence of the rights of freeborn Britons. I suppose a lot of those Tories would have been what you might call 'one-nation Tories.' That tradition has died in the Conservative party.

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• When the Tories came to power in 2010, the ground-breaking Equality Act had just become law. But the newly appointed Equalities Minister wasted no time in systematically undermining both the Act itself and the Commission responsible for enforcing it.

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• The Tories have long since abdicated any pretension of principled global leadership.

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• The destructive impact of employment tribunal fees, which were introduced in 2013, is by now well known.

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• The principle behind the Equal Pay Act is that if an individual woman finds a man doing similar work and being paid more she can take her employer to a tribunal and get paid equally and compensated. Sounds simple enough. But in reality this law has been hamstrung by a series of stupid loopholes that have developed over the years.

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• The most prominent - and by far the most controversial - part of 'Help to Work' essentially forces people to take unpaid work placements as a condition of receiving their benefits.

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• Unesco can rightly be claimed as one of Britain's greatest contributions to that global architecture of peace, and for Penny Mordaunt to be willing to destroy that legacy by withdrawing Britain's membership is nothing but historical and cultural vandalism.

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• Our courts' decisions do not permeate the public consciousness - we have no equivalent of the Brown v Board of Education ruling which outlawed racial segregation, or of Roe v Wade, which enshrined a woman's right to choose not just into law but into the public imagination as well.

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• The welfare state, which grew out of post-war solidarity, has for decades been based on the principle that those who pay into the system are entitled to expect that the safety net will be there for them when they fall on hard times.

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• Why the Tories are happy to subsidise home ownership for middle class graduates and affluent social tenants, but not for widows on low incomes, is simply beyond me.

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• The right to strike is one of the most important safeguards working people have in this country. It's a weapon of last resort that has served throughout history as a bargaining tool which allows unions to push for recognition of ordinary workers' rights to be paid fairly and treated with dignity.

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