News / Politics
Zarah Sultana speaks on main stage at Forwards Festival
Zarah Sultana made a surprise appearance on the main stage at Forwards, delivering a passionate speech to the crowd before introducing Nia Archives.
The MP for Coventry South resigned from the Labour Party in July in order to co-found a new grassroots party with fellow independent MPs including former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Earlier on Sunday, Sultana had taken part in a panel discussion called The Movement Forward: Pissed off with Politics on the Information Stage at the festival on the Downs.
On the main stage, Sultana said: “A lot of people are fed up. I am too. Fed up with being told that this is just how things are. Fed up with being asked to settle for less. Fed up with the idea that the best we can do is manage decline, implement austerity, blame migrants, Muslims and trans people, enable genocide in Gaza, and have fascism growling at the door.
“But here’s the truth: politics is not only what happens in parliament or on the news. Politics is us. It’s here. It’s all of you.
“It’s people deciding they won’t accept the world as it is. It’s people daring to imagine the world as it should be.
“Every great change we’ve ever seen, from rights at work, to votes for women, to the NHS didn’t come from the top down.
“It came because ordinary people stood up and said: we aren’t going to take this anymore.
“And when people come together with that conviction, something powerful happens: hope.
“Not the shallow kind that tells us to just wait and see, but the deep kind that comes when we believe we can build something new, and we start doing it.”
Zarah Sultana delivered a rousing speech on Sunday at Forwards – photo: Khali Ackford
Referencing the words of prime minister Keir Starmer, Sultana said that the United Kingdom “is not an island of strangers”.
She said: “We’re an island that’s suffering, that needs hope, that needs change and we will fight for something better.
“So when people tell you that things can’t change, remember this: they always say that. Until the moment they do.
“And at a festival like this where people gather not just to escape the world, but to imagine new ones, we get a glimpse of what’s possible.
“People looking out for each other. People building community. People daring to dream.
“Let’s take that collective, and hope beyond these fields. And carry it into our streets, our schools, our workplaces, our homes.
“Because politics doesn’t belong to the billionaires. It belongs to us, the people.
“And we’re not begging for crumbs off the table. We’re coming for the lot.”
Main photo: Khali Ackford
Read next:
Our newsletters emailed directly to you
