Jeremy Corbyn is due to take time out from the Labour party’s internal wranglings to discuss the state of the world and the potential for positive change with the Nigerian novelist Ben Okri.
As Corbyn faces challenges for the leadership of his party, organisers confirmed that his discussion with the Booker prize-winning author was still scheduled to go ahead at the Royal Festival Hall on Friday evening. Organised by 5x15, in association with the Southbank Centre, the event is pitched as “an unforgettable evening, an inspiring and invigorating meeting of minds”.
“United by a desire to make our world a kinder, fairer place, [Corbyn and Okri] will discuss the forces that have made them what they are, the state of the world today and their belief that we can transform ourselves for the better,” said organisers.
Although the two men have never met, Corbyn cited Okri as “a great Nigerian writer” in his acceptance speech after being elected leader of the Labour party in September last year, citing Okri’s comment that “the most authentic thing about us is our capacity to create, to overcome, to endure, to transform, to love”.
Okri subsequently responded with a poem, A New Dream of Politics, in which he wrote: “Always when least expected an unexpected / Figure rises when dreams here have / Become like ashes.
“Can we still seek the lost angels / Of our better natures? … We dream of a new politics / That will renew the world / Under their weary suspicious gaze.”
The novelist told the Guardian at the time that he was “very pleased, very touched” to be cited by Corbyn, saying: “It’s a brave thing for a politician these days to admit to reading contemporary writers. But we need politicians who read widely, who read the classics, the masters, but who also read contemporary writers, who read across colour, across race, across class. If we don’t have politicians who read widely, how can we ever get to a new politics?”
Okri said that Corbyn might yet reach the vision of politics he lays out in his poem. “It depends on how he comes through this political period in which we find ourselves, and whether his party is prepared to let this spirit be possible. But at least, surely, there will be change,” he said in October.
On Wednesday, Okri told the Guardian that Corbyn “was something very rare in politics, a man with a quest for integrity and truth” and that he was looking forward to “a bloody good conversation” with the politician on Friday.
“I have always have had a sympathy for the Labour party, but he has energised it in the most amazing way – and in the minds of some, a most controversial way,” Okri said.
“A politician … is somebody who has to, as it were, bend with all kinds of prevailing winds. The relationship between personal integrity and politics has always been a tricky one and it is unfortunate that this very fact is not as appreciated as it should be in our times. We cry for a politics of authenticity – that is what human beings want more than anything else – but when we have a figure like that, we are conflicted as well … We need to ask ourselves what we really want from them.”
On Wednesday, the former shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith announced he would be challenging Corbyn for the Labour leadership, as well as fellow MP Angela Eagle.
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