Brighton, United Kingdom: The British Labour Party’s new leader Jeremy Corbyn on Tuesday called for an “end to injustice” in Britain, accusing Prime Minister David Cameron’s Conservative government of creating poverty.

In his first speech as leader at the party’s annual conference in Brighton, Corbyn said he wanted “a kinder politics, a more caring society”.

“We’re going to put these values back into the heart of politics in this country,” said the 66-year-old left-winger, whose landslide victory in a party election this month took observers by surprise.

“Under my leadership, Labour will be challenging austerity. It will be unapologetic about reforming our economy to challenge inequality and protect workers better,” Corbyn told cheering delegates.

“The Tory austerity is the outdated and thoroughly failed approach of the past,” Corbyn said, accusing the Conservatives of telling a “lie” by saying that they were on the side of British workers.

Wearing a brown jacket and red tie, Corbyn walked on to the stage of the Brighton conference centre to applause but not to any music, reflecting his desire to champion an “unspun” form of politics.

He said he was “unapologetic” about his plans to reform the economy and to protect workers’ rights. “Now is the time for capital investment in our infrastructure,” he said.

Fair play

He attacked global companies for rewarding executives with outsize payments while offering low pay to millions of workers. His values of “fair play for all, solidarity and not walking by on the other side of the street” were universal values, he said.

“It is this sense of fair play, these shared majority British values, that are the fundamental reason I love this country and its people. It is because I am driven by these British majority values — because I love this country — that I want to rid it of injustice, to make it fairer, more decent, more equal.”

Corbyn called the housing shortage the Tories’ biggest failure, adding: “There is no answer at all to this housing crisis that does not start with a new, active council housing programme.” He attacked the Tories for handing an inheritance tax cut to 60,000 of the most affluent people in Britain. It was an “absurd lie” that the Conservatives were on the side of low-paid workers, he insisted.

Corbyn repeated his claim that the only way to protect British people at home and abroad was to resolve conflict. “It is unavoidable if we want real security,” he said.

He also accused the Conservatives of working for wealthy donors, saying: “That’s why this pre-paid government came into being, to protect the few.”

Corbyn also urged Cameron to take a stronger line on international human rights.

Corbyn, a longtime pacifist and anti-nuclear campaigner, also reiterated his staunch opposition to Trident, Britain’s nuclear-armed submarine system — a highly divisive issue within his own party.

The new leader was a co-founder of the Stop the War coalition and organised Britain’s largest ever demonstration in 2003 under former prime minister Tony Blair in the run-up to the Iraq War.

“It didn’t help our national security when we went to war with Iraq in defiance of the United Nations and on a false prospectus,” he told the conference.