Everyone can it with the personal cracks. That’s not what you’re here for.
How relevant is PIRA in UK politics or society these days? Not much from what I saw in my time there, although UK dopers would know better.
If Matin McGuinness could become best of buds with Ian Paisley, then I somehow doubt Corbyn would suffer too much.
Paywall, can’t read it, suffering too much austerity.
Quite happy about him snubbing the Queen though. We’ll maybe move out of the 18th century soon. How about a nice presidential system like those splendid Americans have ? I know, I know, that’s all rational and meritocratic and everything…
I doubt if the Ulster situation has that much more traction now: I wholly opposed the nationalists, but I equally opposed the rest of the actors: they are all fucking republicans of one type or the other. This person’s chumming up with the IRA would have turned me off a decade or more back when they were a danger; now peace in Ulster is more important than clinging to the ancient hatreds.
One can still hate privately, but emotion should never determine policy.
I haven’t read the piece and don’t particularly want to, I don’t understand the assumption other entities should inform or even define my moral compass, whether it’s a newspaper owner or a transient Gov of Trustafarian class waring ideologues (oops, a judgement).
It’s a bit like feeling you have to stand up for a national anthem or for minutes’ silence - even if it’s for a mercenary contractor taking his chances in Iraq for a tax free fortune, and getting his head chopped off.
Please report ‘news’ but editorialising, defining, judging … no thanks, I’m a grown up.
It was obvious from the early period of Corbyn’s leadership campaign that the “dirt” his political opponents and media used against him was only the tip of the iceberg. Most of Corbyn’s political career has been flown under the radar. The months and years ahead was when most of the dirt on him would be found out. I suspect an awful lot more is still to come out, much of it yet to be unearthed by journalists. Not only will it be unearthed by journalists but much will be leaked by the security and intelligence community. The people staffing these organizations will have had family and friends killed by the IRA. Whether we agree with it or not these people will see an opportunity for payback against Corbyn now.
Everyone spoke to the IRA, and all the way through that era - politicians, Whitehall, Gov, Intelligence. It’s a faux-shock nonsense to suggest otherwise. It’s so well documented now - esp with stuff coming out under the 30 year rule - you have to a fool to fall for the telegraph’s latest smear.
For goodness sake, bogus public pandering aside, it’s incumbent on them to find solutions. One example:
It’s not speaking to the IRA that is the controversial issue here; it’s Corbyn’s speaking for the IRA that is the controversial issue.
I think this is the key, it appears he was very much sympathetic and supportive of the IRA and their aims during a period when the were killing UK civilians.
The claims that “everyone was talking to the IRA” are of course true. I don’t think any sensible person would believe otherwise. That is how progress is made but at least the leaders of the time had the good grace to hold their nose while they did it and had the justification of making a material difference to national security.
Corby and McDonnell seemed to be far less concerned about their friends backgrounds.
And this is someone that the Labour party wants to sell to the UK public as a potential leader. I just can’t see it. Ask the public if they’d rather have their leader skull-fuck a pig or climb happily into bed with the IRA and I suspect they’d choose the former.
His general view on republicanism is of course his choice. Luckily for him it is a free country but unluckily for him that free country also has a free vote that puts some emphasis on perceptions of the leader, just ask Michael Foot, William Hague, Ian Duncan-Smith, Gordon Brown and Ed Miliband.
It may well be true that the Labour party has attracted tens of thousands of vocal new members. That’s great, but it counts for little if, at the same time, you haemorrhage votes from the less ideologically dogmatic labour supporters and floating voters such as myself.
Anecdotally, labour voters that I know are making very unhappy sounds about Corbyn and the shadow front bench in general.
Corbyn and McDonnell, from these records (which I’m assuming are not falsified) seemed to be genuinely supportive of the IRA. Do you not think that is substantially different from a government holding back-channel talks to broker peace?
Or, think of it another way, what if David Cameron had an identical record of support and platform-sharing with the IRA or any of the paramilitary organisations. Do you not think that would be raised as a major issue as well?
Wait, Cameron supports Saudi Arabia and all those Gulf states who are helping our deadly Islamist terrorist enemies right now. We don’t have to imagine terrorist links.
.or even… Telegraph again…
Maybe they have a nod and a wink deal to not bring the badness to UK soil. Maybe that’s not up to them ?
As has every government since the beginning of oil…sorry, time.
I don’t get the impression that Cameron or Blair or any of their predecessors are ideologically aligned with the gulf states.
I’ll have to wait and see what this Telegraph scoop says I guess.
Nor would Cameron mock the murder (and permanent injury) of Labour MP’s quite the same way Corbyn allowed mocking the murder of 4 senior Conservatives in a Corbyn edited publication. As you stated previously, no-one is calling for Corbyn to be placed against a firing squad here. Corbyn is allowed to align himself with whoever he wishes and in whatever way he wishes. However, he has to expect the consequences of his choices. The consequence in my view is the further disillusionment of the semi skilled English working class with Labour. Just about every English constituency will contain a victim of the IRA. Expect almost every local paper to carry a sympathetic story from victim’s families in the run up to the next GE.
I don’t see it. Semi skilled workers don’t read the Telegraph much for one. For another, there are millions of people now in the workforce who’s only experience of the IRA is as foreign news. UKIP will hate him for it, and the other people UKIP hate will be more concerned with wages and rent.
Eh, just read the piece - sharp intake of breath.
Corbyn is on record as a committed opponent of nuclear weapons - so he can stick to his guns (teehee) or be labelled a hypocrite. Either way, he’ll get it in the neck, but at least this way he demonstrates integrity.
Of course, plenty of national leaders ‘tell’ potential enemies they won’t annihilate with nuclear weapons…because they don’t have any. Would you use them yourself? If so, would you use them as a first strike, making you a callous monster, or only in retaliation…in which case they clearly weren’t a deterrent…?
Some people feel that the country must be run by a callous monster (or at least someone prepared to enact posthumous revenge we’ll be blissfully unaware of). I expect some proportion of those people would advocate a military coup in the event that a democratic system ‘failed’ to bring the result they wanted.
As for these IRA links, in which the actions of some politicians put them in close proximity to ‘a readers letter’ from an unpleasant reader, and in which some politicians are seen in photographs shaking hands with the wrong sort of people (like Jack Straw and Mugabe, for instance), perhaps it is best for world leaders to entirely disassociate themselves with any public figure who served prison time for their refusal to abandon an armed struggle against an oppressive regime. But they all went to Mandela’s funeral, anyway (Cameron and Obama at least had the decency to puncture the solemnity of the occasion by posing for a selfie).
Mud sticks, guaranteed come election time people will be hammered with a simple message.
*
‘IRA supporter’
‘Economic threat’
‘Threat to national security’*
Repeated ad infinitum, and he will subsequently lose the General election. This kind of attack worked last time on Ed Miliband by associating him with the SNP.