Yanis Varoufakis speaks at the launch of DiEM25-UK in Conway Hall, London, 28 January 2017.
The wooden panels that line Conway Hall give the building a cosy vibe. Throughout the years, the venue has played host to various punk gigs and witnessed the ebbs and flows of London’s radical left. Today, the sense of living in revolutionary times also reverberated around the room. Brian Eno, one of the attendees, put it best. “I used to come here in the 60s,” he reminisced, “Back then it also seemed as if everything was changing.”
The previous night, Yanis Varoufakis, Srecko Horvat and Elif Safak had taken part in a Guardian Live event called Brexit: An Unorthodox View where they had discussed the rise of the far-right and the retreat of sections of the left into quasi-nationalism and stricter border controls. The discussion ended with an invitation by Varoufakis, ‘Anyone interested in the issues discussed and wishes to be involved in a progressive movement for change, come tomorrow.’ No one really knew how many people would show up.
