Corbyn calls for music and poetry at every meeting to tempt people to socialism

More people could be tempted to embrace socialism by including music and poetry in every meeting, Jeremy Corbyn has said.

The former Labour leader told an event at The World Transformed conference, which is running alongside the Labour Party conference in Brighton that political meetings did not need to be boring and “held on cold winter nights in miserable halls”.

And he said there were many different ways in which people could come to “political conclusions”.

Mr Corbyn was responding to a question from the audience on how to tackle a fear of the word socialism.

He replied: “Well, socialism is about everyday life and how you live your life.”

He said the “the vast majority of people do hold socialist values to some extent or the other”, and pointed to support for the NHS as an example.

But he said: “Socialism is also about culture, and art, and expression, which is why we shouldn’t sort of always cut ourselves off and insist that all meetings are only ever rather boring and rather dour and rather long, and preferably held on cold winter nights in the miserable halls.

“Actually, I think all our meetings should include music, should include poetry, should include ways of getting people to think about things because people come to political conclusions by lots of different routes.

“Let’s make sure we’re on all those routes as well.”