Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader, the party have had a fair few run-ins with dictators of the past. After John McDonnell quoted Chairman Mao during the budget, Corbyn then cited Enver Hoxha at the Labour Christmas party — while his director of comms Seumas Milne has questioned just how many deaths Stalin actually brought about.
Happily some prominent Labour members are happy to talk about the shortcomings of such dictators. In an interview with The Rake, Martin Freeman — who starred in Labour’s election broadcast when Ed Miliband was leader — says it’s unfair to call all Tories ‘evil’, as the left has been responsible for more deaths in recent years:
‘My team — the left, generally — has been responsible for more deaths in the last century than the other team if you count Stalin, Mao, the Khmer Rouge, the Shining Path… that’s not a good team.
Freeman adds that left-wingers are actually ‘quite at home with evil bastards’:
The left is quite at home with evil bastards, actually. Religion doesn’t have a downpayment on genocide: there are atheists, materialists and socialists who have gone on quite happily with rape and murder.’
Despite this, Freeman — who once voted for Arthur Scargill’s socialist party — is right behind Corbyn and his leadership:
‘I’ve been really encouraged by Corbyn, because he uses the word ‘kindness’ a lot.’
Vive la Revolution!
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