When Jeremy Corbyn recently attacked Theresa May for her
close ties with Saudi Arabia, her defence was that the UK needed to maintain
the relationship in order to be able to influence the regime in Riyadh. The exchanges in the House of Commons were
tetchy.
You might be forgiven for thinking that the Labour Leader
(beloved by his supporters for supposedly being on the ‘right side of history’)
had taken the moral high ground here. But actually there’s no moral high ground
with the far left when it comes to defence, security and foreign affairs.
We can see this in Corbyn’s latest interview with the BBC,
in which he was asked about UK ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Here is his reply: “Would I do business with Putin? Sure.
And I’d challenge him on human rights in Russia, challenge him on these issues
and challenge him on that whole basis of that relationship. You have to deal
with people who are in the position they are as head of state…”
To be fair to Jez, one senses that he is probably oblivious
to his own mind-blowing hypocrisy. After all, we’re talking about someone who
believes samples of nerve agent from the Salisbury attack should be given to
the Russians so that they can confirm one way or another whether it was theirs.
Remind you of anyone? Donald Trump has, of course, taken
Putin’s word for the fact that there was no interference in the US presidential
election in November 2016.
And what do Trump and Jez and Putin all have in common? Suspicion
of multinational institutions, such as the EU and NATO. Anti-globalist and
protectionist instincts. Populist rhetoric. A distrust of ‘mainstream media’.
Latest polling shows faith in Theresa May growing slowly and
belief in Corbyn diminishing. While the incumbent Prime Minister doesn’t
inspire great confidence, she has managed – against many people’s expectations –
to keep the Brexit process moving and has proved to be firm and resolute in the
aftermath of Salisbury.
The left? They are obsessed with hats.
In a breathtaking example of fake news spreading far further
and far faster than the truth, they alleged that the BBC had ‘Photoshopped’ an
image of Corbyn to make his trademark cap more ‘Russian’ against a backdrop of
the Kremlin on Newsnight. Although
this claim has been thoroughly debunked by people who understand the
technology, it has sent Momentum fans into apoplexy and even led to online commentary about #hatgate from pro-leadership MPs such as Laura Pidcock.
A nerve agent was used as a weapon on NATO soil for the
first time in the organisation’s existence. The response of the Russian government
is to treat the incident as a joke and post pictures of Poirot on Twitter. And
the reaction of the Corbynite left is to complain about the image of their
leader being manipulated on a TV show and to argue that we should ask the
allege perpetrators of the attack to confirm whether they committed the crime
or not.
No wonder moderate Labour MPs are up in arms. They realise
the damage that Corbyn’s weakness does on the doorstep and they see a
once-proud and patriotic party reduced to a laughing stock. Talk begins to
circulate once again about a breakaway organisation – perhaps staffed by key
officials who have quit at the prospect of Jennie Formby’s appointment as
General Secretary.
But as the grapevine shakes with rumour, we can fairly
confident that no fruit will fall. It seems there is no twist in the Corbyn
saga too alarming to provoke a real rebellion and no turn in policy that will
lead MPs to make a unilateral declaration of independence. As a result, they give their tacit consent to
their own eventual deselection. Or perhaps a fate worse than deselection:
staying on as the walking dead, taking their orders from people who are unable
to stand up for the British nation in a time of crisis.
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