It’s over then. After almost five years, Jeremy Corbyn’s tenure as Labour leader has come to a close. Corbyn ended as he led: with the petulance and ill grace that has characterised his political career.
As Corbyn slopes to the backbenches to resume a life of fruitless campaigning, Keir Starmer steps up to replace him. He faces a mammoth task: rebuilding Labour as a credible electoral force. This is necessary for both party and country. All of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, need a functioning opposition. But make no mistake: if Starmer is to make Labour palatable once more, both politically and indeed morally, he will need to reject his predecessor’s foreign policy – and quickly.
Corbynism had a warped view of the world, with Britain’s role in it necessarily warped, too. Rejecting Corbyn’s foreign policy means rejecting a wholesale belief system which infects much of Labour’s governing apparatus. It is based on conspiracy, anti-Westernism, and on the pervasive apologism of autocracy. Labour needs to rid itself of a mindset drenched in anti-Americanism, and which sees Britain better off outside the common defence obligations of Nato in favour of cosying up to Putin.
This is not hyperbole. And it is worth remembering exactly what we are talking about here. Just consider Corbyn’s reaction to the news that Russian agents had poisoned Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in 2018. You’d have thought that the leader of her Majesty’s loyal opposition would have felt outraged by the attack. Not Corbyn. He refused to condemn Russia, while his spokesman even questioned the reliability of British intelligence assessments given the debacle of Iraq. Forget Britain over Russia; he couldn’t even choose MI6 over the FSB.
For too long repugnant regimes had a sympathetic ear in Corbyn.
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