Years-old speeches 'emerge' with strategic timing
When newspapers tell you something has ’emerged’ or ‘surfaced’ without saying how or from where, it’s best to be on your guard.
A story in yesterday’s Sunday Times is a case in point. Under the headline ‘Corbyn: Tribute to WWI is pointless’, it begins:
“Jeremy Corbyn has said he can’t see the point of commemorating the First World War.
The Labour leader used a speech to the Morning Star, the newspaper founded by the Communist party of Great Britain, to denounce the government’s decision to spend ‘shed loads of money’ on events last year to mark the one hundredth anniversary of the outbreak of the conflict.
The comments emerged just a week before Remembrance Sunday, where Corbyn is due to lay a wreath at the cenotaph in his role as leader of the opposition.”
From this you would get the impression the Labour party leader has made these remarks recently in relation to the coming Remembrance Day ceremony.
What we learn in paragraph five though is that Corbyn’s quotes are taken from a speech made in April 2013 – that’s to say, over two years ago.
Other papers have taken up the story in similar fashion. The Telegraph‘s headline announces ‘Jeremy Corbyn questions why Britain commemorates the First World War’. Note the present tense word ‘questions’. The Daily Express yelps: ‘Jeremy Corbyn says spending ‘shedloads’ on remembering WWI soldiers is POINTLESS’. Again, the words are ‘says’ and ‘is’.
And the Daily Mail‘s story begins:
“Jeremy Corbyn has sparked criticism for saying he cannot see the point of commemorating the First World War, while also denouncing the ‘shedloads of money’ spent on last year’s centenary events.
The Labour leader’s comments have emerged on the eve of next week’s Remembrance Sunday… [etc.]”
While they make clear when the remarks were made, these stories are potentially misleading, as they could give the impression of this being a new intervention by the leader of the Labour party, rather than old remarks made when the prospect of his achieving that post was remote, to say the least.
As with the Sun‘s front page story on the Monday after Corbyn was elected leader, reporting three-year-old comments by Corbyn about ‘abolishing the army’, these WWI stories have the whiff of premeditation.
As it happens, Corbyn was perfectly right to question David Cameron’s pledge to spend £50million marking the war’s centenary in a time of public spending cuts. He was also right to speak against the prevailing wind on the war, with hazy words about ‘sacrifice’ and ‘freedom’ thrown around without going very much deeper.
(Interestingly, the first person to put these reservations in print was Guardian columnist and newly appointed Corbyn spin doctor Seumas Milne. With tedious ideological consistency, Milne lamented how the war ‘laid the ground for the rise of Nazism’ without mentioning the equally disastrous rise of Bolshevism in Russia.)
However, Corbyn’s past remarks and positions are fair game for scrutiny, especially since he presumably still holds these views. (Whether they are Labour party policy or not is another matter.) These stories are really a symptom of Corbyn’s sudden move from backbench freedom to the intense public glare of national politics.
That said, it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the press has gone through his old speeches and is saving them up as part of a slow-drip campaign to damage his reputation. This is as much a political act as Corbyn’s decision to make those speeches in the first place.
***
Like this article? Support our work: donate here.
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow MediaWatch on Twitter
Sign up for our weekly email by clicking here.
24 Responses to “Do Jeremy Corbyn’s old remarks on WWI deserve press coverage?”
Cole
Probably less harmful than being ‘friends’ with Hamas and Hizbollah.
Lamia
What we learn in paragraph five though is that Corbyn’s quotes are taken from a speech made in April 2013 – that’s to say, over two years ago
Or put another way:
‘that’s to say, only two years ago. In fact, only one and a half years ago.’
Never mind why Corbyn’s dodgy (recent) past keeps being drawn out. That’s obvious. You might more usefully and honestly apply yourself to asking why this is even possible. It’s because there is so much of it.
it’s becoming increasingly obvious that the press has gone through his old speeches and is saving them up as part of a slow-drip campaign to damage his reputation. This is as much a political act as Corbyn’s decision to make those speeches in the first place.
If he’s said and done these stupid and in some cases repellent things – which he has, and which has been known to some of us for years – then of course his opponents are going to bring them up. Why on earth shouldn’t they? It serves him right. No one forced him to say those things.
Lamia
Why don’t you, then? Was she a terrorist as well, like a number of Jezzer’s chums?
Riversideboy
When families have to go to food banks to survive and the NHS is being starved to death you dont think its wrong to spend £50 million on a Remembrance parade? Where are you priorities, my father fought in world war two but I know what he would have thought of spending money like that when you (Cameron) are actively making people poor because you claim there is no money in Britain. They dont count is the answer.
S&A
‘When families have to go to food banks to survive and the NHS is being starved to death you dont think its wrong to spend £50 million on a Remembrance parade?’
Firstly, it’s not just £50m on ‘a Remembrance parade’. These were for commemorative events across the country which millions of people took part in of their own accord. Because unlike you they saw it as necessary.
Secondly, the NHS’s budget for FY 2015-2016 £115.4bn. If you think somehow that it was ‘starved to death’ to pay for the WWI commemorations, then I suggest you need to pay closer attention to your Maths GCSE classes.
Thirdly, it is an act of pathetic moral blackmail on your part to somehow imply that people who wish to commemorate the war dead are intent on depriving food banks of the means to support the living. Both are supported by charitable means (the RBL and the Trussell Trust), and only an idiot like you can assume that you can’t support both.
Finally, RBL still does important work to help families of war dead, wounded and veterans from a series of conflicts from WWII to today. Your father would I suspect probably still want to see them supported thanks to the efforts of the RBL to keep their welfare in the public eye (and the WWI commemorations were part of that effort). You clearly do not.