Stephen Daisley Stephen Daisley

Did Jeremy Corbyn bring down the Iron Curtain?

There are two competing theories about how the Soviet Union collapsed. One holds that Ronald Reagan’s moral leadership against communism and bolstering of US defences weakened Moscow’s will and buried them economically. The other contends that Mikhail Gorbachev’s domestic reforms and wise diplomacy brought down the Iron Curtain in spite of the cowboy in the White House. We can now add a third hypothesis: Jeremy Corbyn did it.

If the claims of a former Czechoslovakian agent are to be believed, the Labour leader was a paid informant for the secret police. That would certainly explain the devastating collapse of state socialism. Even the mighty Warsaw Pact could not have withstood the support of Jeremy Corbyn. 

Corbyn denies the allegations and can pray in aid two compelling points. One, he has spent his life championing every miserable stupidity to pass as a doctrine of human affairs. Communism was notoriously inefficient but not so much that it would have paid Corbyn to do something he would surely have done for free. Two, the Czechoslovakian spooks could have learned more about British intelligence from watching a Bond movie than from receiving cables from Corbyn. And not one of the good Bond movies. One of the Timothy Dalton ones. 

The Soviets managed to turn Kim Philby, Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. The idea they would then focus their energies on a crank marrow-grower from north London is dubious. What possible intelligence could he have provided them? Advance notice of his early day motions on Israeli settlements? Gossip from the annual Troops Out fundraising tombola? The ŠtB (the Czechoslovakian secret police) was notorious for its cunning, cruelty and ruthlessness, a reputation one does not gain by deploying the understudy Tony Benn on reconnaissance missions. If Jeremy Corbyn had been a spy for the Eastern Bloc, the Lives of Others would have been a comedy. 

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