Jeremy Corbyn’s response to the poisoning of a Russian former double agent on British soil has once again put the spotlight on the Labour leader’s unsavoury tendency to side with the enemies of the West. While in fact Corbyn is correct in his assertion that you usually wait until the evidence has been thoroughly examined before you accuse, and it is true that the West is quick to stir up tension with Russia rather than be diplomatic, the equivocation in his Commons response was met with disapproval from all sides, including many within his own ranks. Polling shows the public also disapproves and Labour has since been in damage control mode. On Twitter, one can read the unease amongst the Corbynistas in their disproportionate outrage over a hat; the perceived manipulation by the BBC Newsnight programme (denied by the BBC) of the size of the leader’s hat (it made it seem more Russian, apparently) on a background picture has fed the narrative that the mainstream media has it in for Corbyn.
The ‘hat-gate’ outrage can seem bizarre. It is hardly a character assassination to portray Corbyn as a communist sympathizer. His Shadow Chancellor is a self-declared Marxist and he retains the services of Andrew Murray, a former high-ranking member of the Communist Party. He has often spoken at events under hammer and sickle banners and in the past expressed regret at the demise of the USSR. And this is of course not what the Corbynistas are complaining about. Their concern is that the image on Newsnight portraited Corbyn as a Kremlin lackey, reinforcing the public’s perception of him as Putin’s stooge. And though the insidious hat-enlargement may be pure fantasy, this is unfair. He has no history of supporting Putin. The even more concerning truth is that Corbyn still harbours warm feelings for the Soviet regime and struggles to disassociate the totalitarian socialist state of yesterday from the sham democracy that is Russia today. Instinctively, he does what he has always done and sides with the enemies of the West, which to him still represents the values he disdains and has spent his life campaigning against: freedom, individualism, free enterprise and capitalism.
What should concern the British electorate is not only his lack of judgement in the case at hand and the implications for national security should he become Prime Minister, but his innate contempt for the values that has been the foundation for the wealth generation and relative freedom the Western world has enjoyed while regimes that chose a socialist path has imploded one after another in seas of human misery.
The Corbynistas like to portray their man as a man of principle, a level-headed man who is not jumping to conclusions but demanding due process. The truth is that Corbyn is an socialist ideologue, a man wedded to failed and dangerous ideas, not to worthy principles of freedom, due process and non-aggression. For example, he may have been right to disown the wars in Iraq and Libya, but his perceived pacifism has proven selective. His youthful opposition to the Vietnam war was obviously rooted in sympathy for the Communist North Vietnam – he of course never questioned the legitimacy of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. He rightly blames the wars in the Middle East for contributing to radicalizing young Muslims, but he has never placed any culpability at the door of the Soviets.
Corbyn’s advocates like to proclaim that their man has always been on the right side of history and so far attempts by his adversaries to draw attention to his unsavoury past has failed to produce tangible results. While their claim has always been demonstrably false, from the IRA to the USSR, Cuba and Venezuela, the Corbynistas now fear their narrative finally may be crumbling before them. We, who rightly fear and deride those failed ideologies that Corbyn subscribes to, can only hope that they are right.