I’m not a big follower of British politics and I hadn’t even heard of Corbyn until last week. Now that I have, I can’t quite understand why anyone would support him. Dyad Abou JahJah seems to be just the tip of the iceberg.
Corbyn has praised the Islamic preacher Raed Salah. Salah has gone to jail for raising money for terrorist groups. He supports Iran, wants a global caliphate, and pours forth the usual anti-semitic bilge. Corbyn is now trying to claim that he just didn’t know what Salah stood for.
Next up: Paul Eisen. Proud, outspoken anti-semite and Holocaust denier. Seems like Corbyn liked him quite a bit, attending events run by Eisen and donating to Eisen’s extremist anti-Israeli groups. Now Eisen is writing blog posts in favor of Corbyn’s election. Yet again, Corbyn is claim that he just didn’t know what Eisen said and did.
After that comes Reverend Stephen Sizer, a loony left, anti-semitic Church of England minister who once promoted the claim that the Jews were behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Corbyn defended Sizer and insisted that Sizer was under attack by “Zionists”. Now he’s backpeddling away from Sizer too.
Corbyn has described Islamic terrorist groups as “friends”, another position which he’s now trying to waddle away from. Corbyn invited IRA leaders to London back when the IRA was an active terrorist group, murdering innocent people. Is this really the best guy that Labor can find?
I’d probably watch the film/mock-doc of what would happen should Corbyn win the Labour Leadership. I probably wouldn’t want it to be a lived experience, principally because I oppose several Conservative policies and the reality is likely to be that a Corbyn led Labour Party would be so bound up in internecine fighting, with a real possibility of a split, that effective opposition to the Government would be highly unlikely. FFS, the Tories only have a majority in the 20s and have their own set of divisions to worry about - an effective opposition could actually do some good.
He’s “fratenising” - goodness me! You should have said sooner.
Heaven forbid a leading politician should talk to people of different opinions. This can only end in madness like the Good Friday Agreement.
It’s really so nice to see so many Labour Party members turn away from the shrill tabloid screeching of modern politics and to grasp the sanity beyond.
There is a world of difference between those people a politician has to speak to, and those they choose to speak to. The latter is indicative of where sympathies truly lie.
When you hear of tories fraternising with big business and wealthy bankers I suspect you, just as I am, are happy to consider that evidence of what their motivations and alliances really are?
Heaven forbid a leading politician should talk to people of different opinions. This can only end in madness like the Good Friday Agreement.
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Corbyn has never been a leading politician, at least until recently, and certainly wasn’t when he was appearing beside known anti-semites and those who celebrate the deaths of British soldiers at stop the war rallies, and inviting those same figures to parliament as his guest. Corbyn is the definition of a career backbencher. Your own analogy with the Good Friday Agreement breaks down because it was the leadership of both the IRA and the British Government that decided to talk, not some random backbencher acting on their own volition, and the talks actually had a defined purpose. What was Corbyn hoping to achieve by inviting this guy, in your mind? A unilateral negotiation of peace in the Middle East?
I mean, holy shit, how fucking deluded do you have to be to not understand this is a massive fucking problem for any candidate who ostensibly is going to be standing as Prime Minister of the UK.
This is spot on. It’s the job of Prime Minister’s and Foreign Secretary’s to deal with, and talk to, people we may not like. Some of these people may be dictators and terrorists. It’s all part and parcel of the job. We may as well not have a foreign policy if our government only dealt with good guys.
If you are being sympathetic to Corbyn you may take the line that he was only open to dialogue. That groups such as Sinn Fein/IRA needed to be brought into the fold. But with Corbyn you get the impression he was leaning distinctly towards Sinn Fein’s goals. For instance you dont get the impression that Corbyn was having quite the same “open dialogue” with the UDA or UVF. I cant guarantee Corbyn never met with political representatives of these groups, but he sure as hell wasn’t cosy with them. Corbyn was not “reaching out” to working class solidarity in NI. He was doing what the far Left did in the 1980’s, he took the traditional far Left view of “Brits out”. This at a time when a perfectly decent non violent alternative political party for Catholics to embrace existed, the SDLP, Corbyn put his hat in the ring with Sinn Fein.
Before the partition of Ireland the army almost rebelled against the UK Government. I am not predicting an army rebellion if Corbyn is fighting a General Election campaign, or is elected PM, but I can almost guarantee the British military and security forces will be leaking against him to the media. And probably with some justification.
That’s the big question for me, too. Is the age of “big tent” politics coming to an end? Or is it just the age of Labour governments that has ended? It’s difficult to see how the more market-friendly elements of Labour could exist in a Corbyn Labour party. It would seem to make more sense for the right of Labour to break off as SDP 2.0 (and in due course ally with the frankly indistinguishable left of the Lib Dems, just like last time), and the rest of Labour to ally with the Greens et al, free of the constraints of having sane economic policies.
The last time I looked, the military in the U.K. is responsible to the Prime Minister, in the same way that the military in the U.S. is responsible to the President. Are you encouraging your military to act in a way that is tantamount to an attempted coup?
No, im expecting a bureaucracy to do what a bureaucracy does; look after its own vested interests. Every government department does it - health, environment, social security - they are all prone to leaking against any government they disagree with. I see no reason to expect anything different from the Ministry of Defence or the security services.
To be perfectly honest a Corbyn General Election victory would put us in uncharted waters. However, it’s par for the course for defence cuts by this Tory government to be met with leaks from within the MoD warning of dire consequences of such cuts. These leaks are as official or unofficial as you like. As I said, every dept does it.
Corbyn must have made a number of enemies within the MoD and security services during his time. I dont think we will ever get that far however. Im fairly sure Corbyn will never be PM. And part of the reason he will never be PM is because of leaks from the MoD and security services that are surely coming his way.
Wait, what? I am seriously confused by this statement. What, precisely, is uncharted about the elected leader of a party that wins a majority in the House of Commons?
I’m enjoying the fact that the daily dramas of who Corbyn once sat on a chair next to and what he once said (often out of context) are seemingly having exactly the opposite effect intended.
Thus far, every single time his humanity and basic integrity shines through - it’s really, really strange. He’s making his opponents look trivial and a little pathetic. Which is, as exemplars of modern political life, pretty much what they are.