Jeremy Corbyn's leadership bid was supposed to inspire debate, yet none of the other candidates have challenged him on foreign policy
Jeremy Corbyn’s latest opinion on foreign policy is that the UK should show more respect to Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Like his other announcements, they are going unchallenged by his rivals in the Labour leadership contest.
Like French far-right leader Marine Le Penn and UKIP leader Nigel Farage, Corbyn thinks that NATO, rather than Vladimir Putin, is at fault for the crisis in Ukraine.
Indeed, Stop the War Coalition, of which Corbyn is chair, regularly pushes pieces so blinkered they could well have been written by the Kremlin itself, such as the ridiculously titled ‘Why the United States launched its proxy war against Russia in Ukraine.’
Moreover, Corbyn expressed regret that Poland was allowed to join NATO, claiming that, ‘We should have gone down the road Ukraine went down in 1990’ (because that has worked out so well).
There’s more. Corbyn’s associations with anti-Semites include: his ‘friends’ Hamas and Hezbollah, his praise for a blood-libel-spreading, 9/11 conspiracy theorist Islamist preacher, who he even invited to take tea on the terrace of the House of Commons, moonlighting for George Galloway on Iranian government propaganda channel Press TV, allegedly donating money to a pressure group run by a holocaust denier and deemed too extreme by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, and defending a priest who shared on social media an article entitled ‘9/11: Israel did it’.
As far as I am aware, none of the current Labour leadership contenders have sought to challenge Corbyn’s views on these issues.
It is staggering that Labour Party figures accuse Corbyn of wanting to return to the days of British Leyland or a ‘Soviet-style’ economy simply for wanting to bring the railways into public ownership (something Andy Burnham claims to support), but will say nothing about his repeated association with anti-Semitic figures or his anti-NATO, pro-Russia, pro-Hamas, pro-Hezbollah stances.
Even in Alistair Campbell’s blog urging people to vote for anyone but Corbyn, there is no proper attempt to challenge Corbyn’s ideology; he simply says Corbyn would be bad for the Labour Party.
If Corbyn can still be defeated it will only be through convincing the party members and supporters why he is wrong – not simply saying he is wrong over and over again.
Whether one agrees with him or not, to the vast majority of people Corbyn comes across as a genuine character, with deeply held convictions (and a record for being the most rebellious Labour MP to back this up). He speaks to Labour members and supporters outraged by the fact the party leadership made such a mess on the welfare bill. Like them, he opposed it and like them, he does not want to tack further to the right.
It is perfectly understandable that party members and supporters are more inclined to vote for someone who comes across as a conviction politician – someone who talks about wanting to turn the party back into a social movement – rather than vote for someone based on whether or not the Tories will fear them.
Put bluntly, people voting for Corbyn know he will not do a Nick Clegg.
By contrast, rival candidates come across as though they are continuing Ed Miliband’s strategy of Balkanising voters: thinking that if they can simply say the right thing to different groups of supporters then they will secure their nominations – clearly this did not work for Ed and is failing epically at present.
There are very serious arguments to be had over many of Corbyn’s views and it’s puzzling that his rival candidates haven’t offered a more extensive critique of them; simply attempting to scare party members into not voting for Corbyn, just saying that he is bad, has failed.
Several MPs claimed they were backing Corbyn not because they support him, but in order to ‘broaden the debate.’ Even at this late stage, can we actually have that debate?
Lorin Bell-Cross is a researcher at BICOM and assistant editor of Fathom Journal. He is writing in a personal capacity. Follow him on Twitter.
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241 Responses to “Why is no one challenging Jeremy Corbyn on foreign policy?”
George Carty
What Britain really needs is a government that can destroy home-owner-ism (I don’t care if this is done by the socialist route of mass council housebuilding, by the capitalist route of repealing the Town and Country Planning Act, or by other routes such as universal rent control or land value taxation), but unfortunately the home-owner-ists have too much electoral power.
Even UKIP (which doesn’t pay lip service to environmentalism like the left-of-centre parties, nor chase the home-owner-ist vote like the Tories) isn’t open to the idea of doing away with the Green Belts – maybe they think deporting immigrants will be enough to solve the problem?
ScubaDynamo
I massively disagree with you.
George Carty
So you think sky-high house prices are a GOOD thing then? Why – have you funded your lifestyle by MEWing by any chance?
ScubaDynamo
What? House prices arent too bad mate. Only if you are in London are they really bad I dont like socialist ideals and I fully believe every man is entitled to be able to own their own home.
I dont think the left of center parties pay any attention to environmentalism. jeremy Corbyn wants to de-commission nuclear and re-open the coal mines. That is much worse than scrapping the wind farm subsidies that UKIP/CON want to do.
Even the green parties environmental credentials are questionable, these days I just think its a front for maxists.
Not sure what you mean by “mewing”. But I have 2 jobs, thats how I fund my lifestyle.
George Carty
OK, I think you misunderstood my use of the term “home-owner-ism” (which was coined by Mark Wadsworth incidentally). It doesn’t mean support for homeownership, but rather support for ever-rising house prices. “Help to Buy” is a textbook home-owner-ist policy — it would be more accurately called “Help to Sell”.
In many American cities, the ratio of median house price to median annual salary is roughly 3 — in Britain it is about 6 even in the more run-down cities and over 10 in London. Still don’t think we have a problem with house prices? (Or to be more accurate, land prices…) And high land prices also hurt business — perhaps that’s why Britain is strong in finance (which doesn’t require significant land area to operate) but increasingly weak in productive industry (which usually does).
If you not only “fully believe every man is entitled to be able to own their own home” but also believe that anyone who works reasonably hard should be able to afford their own home, then the only real way to do that is the way America does it (by allowing unrestrained sprawl — the “capitalist solution” to high house prices which I alluded to earlier).
This may cause too many other problems though in a country as densely populated as Britain, which is why I think a more socialist solution to our housing problems may be more appropriate here. (Or of course the Georgist solution in the form of land value taxation — Winston Churchill supported it during the Edwardian era when he was a Liberal. He’d never have been able to get it past the landowners in the House of Lords though.)
And I said that the left-of-centre parties “pay lip service to environmentalism”, not that they are actually formulating policies in an intelligent way to protect the environment. I’m sure that if UKIP (or some other party) started actually advocated abolishing the Green Belts and/or repealing other planning laws, there’d be an outcry from the left-of-centre parties about “turning London into Los Angeles” or suchlike.
The Greens seem to be very different from Marxists to me (even if Jeremy Corbyn seems to have been heavily influenced by Green ideology). Both oppose capitalism, but Marxists are progressive (they believe they can build a society that is better for the working man than capitalism) while Greens are backward-looking romantics who look longingly to the pre-capitalist era when all production was small-scale.
“MEWing” refers to Mortgage Equity Withdrawal, where homeowners borrow against a rising house value to fund their consumer spending. It is the main reason why a smallish drop in house prices in 2007 required so many banks to be bailed out by the taxpayer.