Jeremy corbyn

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn turns nasty over wreath-gate

Did he or didn’t he? The question, of course, is whether Jeremy Corbyn laid a wreath or not for one of the Munich terrorists. Given the Labour leader’s shifting position on the subject it’s somewhat difficult to keep track. But Corbyn, it seems, has run out of patience with those confused about his wreath-laying antics. Here he is rolling his eyes at a reporter who tried to question him on the subject: Corbyn: I was there when the wreaths were laid, that’s pretty obvious. There were many others who were witness to that, I witnessed many others laying wreaths. Reporter: Did you lay the wreath? Corbyn: I laid one wreath

Steerpike

Owen Jones’s masterclass in ‘whataboutery’

Corbyn cheerleader-in-chief Owen Jones frequently rallies against what he calls ‘whataboutery.’ For those not familiar with the word, it is a technique used to distract people from talking about injustices on your own side by bringing up atrocities elsewhere. Or, in his own words: Given whataboutery is used to deflect responsibility for misdemeanours and crimes committed by ones own side this is a hilarious ironic tweet — Owen Jones (@OwenJones84) April 8, 2018 It is a charge he frequently aims at his critics on the right. But is Jones guilty of it himself when it comes to the Labour leader? Mr Steerpike thinks so. Last night, as Corbyn’s story fell apart

Alex Massie

The myth of Jeremy Corbyn, a kind and gentle man | 14 August 2018

I am relaxed about Jeremy Corbyn being thicker than mince but draw the line at the assumption, all too evidently held by most of his most devoted supporters, that you must be too. If Corbyn wishes to deny the obvious that is his prerogative; the notion you should be prepared to swallow any and every piece of whitewashing nonsense peddled by his fans is quite a different matter.  “I was present” when the wreath was laid “but I don’t think I was involved in it” is, I suppose, a step forward from the Labour party’s previous suggestion that “The Munich widows are being misled. Jeremy did not honour those responsible

Wasn’t my wreath, guv

Does Jeremy Corbyn harbour sinister views – or is he the unluckiest man in the world? That’s the question being asked today after the Labour leader gave an interview to Sky News after allegations he attended a wreath-laying ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 for members of the terrorist group behind the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre. The official Labour line had been that Corbyn was paying his respects to the victims of a 1985 Israeli airstrike on Palestinian Liberation Organisation offices in Tunis. However, today he appeared to change tack. The Labour leader admitted he was present when a wreath was laid but added that he did not ‘think’ he was

Steerpike

Wreath-gate: Corbyn’s version of events – a timeline

Today, Jeremy Corbyn confirmed that he had been at a ceremony which commemorated the deaths of several terrorists linked to the 1972 Munich massacre. But it seems that Jeremy has had trouble recollecting what actually happened while he was there. So, to help jog Jeremy’s memory and to let our readers make up their own minds up about what happened on that day in 2014, Mr S has compiled every version of Jeremy’s story: 1. In 2014, soon after the visit to Tunisia, Corbyn wrote an article for the Morning Star, which said: ‘After wreaths were laid at the graves of those who died on that day and on the

Steerpike

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn’s terror tribute confusion

Poor Jeremy Corbyn, always ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time. After revelations in the Daily Mail that he had laid a wreath near the graves of those involved in the 1972 Munich terrorist attack, he finally clarified what happened. Asked by Sky News if he was involved in the tributes, he answered: ‘I was present when it was laid, I don’t think I was actually involved in it’ Jeremy Corbyn: I was “present” when the wreath was laid “I don’t think I was actually involved in it.” pic.twitter.com/fNL7yXxIdE — Ben (@Jamin2g) August 13, 2018 In fairness, who hasn’t accidentally found themselves at a service where tributes were

Labour plotters: please don’t overthrow Jeremy Corbyn just yet

According to the Daily Express, a tightly knit group of fanatical Labour moderates have been meeting in a country retreat to plot the overthrow of Jeremy Corbyn. Chuka Umunna, Chris Leslie and another ten or so smoothy-chops have met secretly for away-days at Fair Oak Farm, near Mayfield in Sussex, the paper claims. This scoop is a slight blow to me, since I live only a few miles away and failed to notice the plotters, but a much graver one to this country’s greatest defender of ordinary decent people, Paul Dacre, whose large southern estate all but borders Fair Oak. How did the Daily Mail’s inferior rival steal this story

Portrait of the week | 9 August 2018

Home Brandon Lewis, the chairman of the Conservative party, demanded that Boris Johnson, the former foreign secretary, should apologise for saying, in an article defending the right of women in Britain to wear the burka or the niqab, that it was at the same time ‘absolutely ridiculous that people should choose to go around looking like letter boxes’. Theresa May, the Prime Minister, said: ‘The language that Boris used has offended people.’ Jennie Formby, the general secretary of the Labour party, wrote to Dame Margaret Hodge saying that no further action would be taken against her. Dame Margaret was said to have called Jeremy Corbyn, the party leader, an ‘anti-Semite’.

The old left and the new anti-Semitism

This  is the English version of a piece of mine that was first published in DIE WELT on 4 August 2018, in which I attempt to explain to German readers why anti-Semitism, of all things, is dominating politics in Britain, of all places. Germans visiting Britain before Jeremy Corbyn became leader of the Labour party in 2015 would have struggled to find anyone who believed anti-Semitism was worth discussing. I and a few others had warned that the collapse of socialism had allowed a strange post-Marxist left to emerge that endorsed ideas previous generations of socialists would have dismissed as fascistic. There appeared to be no reason for the rest

Watch: Corbyn says the BBC is biased about Israel’s right to exist

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism, which Labour refuses to adopt in full, is very clear about one thing. That denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination constitutes discrimination. In the past though this fact appears to have been lost on Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. Footage has emerged of the leader, speaking on the Iranian sponsored channel Press TV, saying: ‘There seems to be a great deal of pressure on the BBC from the Israeli government and the Israeli embassy and they are very assertive towards all journalists and to the BBC itself. They challenge every single thing on reporting the whole time. I think there is

Jeremy Corbyn and the cynical tactics of the left | 7 August 2018

It is August, so perhaps it is inevitable that parts of the left are getting somewhat over-heated. But it can’t just be the weather. Take this segment from the bottom of a story in Sunday’s ‘Observer’ which was about something else (comments by Labour’s Deputy Leader on that party’s Leader): ‘[Tom] Watson’s intervention came as Corbyn was forced to “entirely disassociate” himself from an organisation whose website lists him as a member of its international advisory panel and which openly supported a prominent writer convicted of Holocaust denial. In 1996, the Just World Trust, an international NGO that has been a trenchant critic of Israel, wrote a letter defending the

Jeremy Corbyn’s cut and paste job

You have a tight deadline and if you miss it there will be trouble. Only it’s a Friday and you’ve got plans so you do a slapdash job and copy and paste from a previous piece of work hoping no-one will notice. This at least appears to be what happened to Jeremy Corbyn on Friday. After a week of tawdry allegations of anti-Semitism, the Labour leader attempted to stem the anger growing at his handling of the situation by penning an article for the Guardian. Only readers were quick to point out that it bears a striking resemblance to the last article on anti-Semitism he wrote for the Evening Standard.

Corbyn breaks his silence on anti-Semitism row – will it make any difference?

After a tawdry week for Labour which saw a flurry of fresh allegations of anti-Semitism in the party’s upper ranks, Jeremy Corbyn has finally broken his silence. Writing an op-ed for the Guardian, the Labour leader admits that there is a ‘real problem’ – and says the party has been too slow in tackling anti-Semitism within its ranks. He promises that things will change: ‘I want Jewish people to feel at home in the Labour party and be able to play their full part in our work to take our country forward. And I appreciate that this cannot happen while anti-Semitic attitudes still surface within Labour, and while trust between

Bigots of the world, unite!

If Jews would get out of Israel and also stop drinking the blood of gentile children, perhaps the rest of the world would like them a little more. That seems to be the fairly broad view among the Hamas groupies on the white British left as well as throughout almost the entire Islamic world. But in particular within the left of the Labour party, which has imbibed this foul ideology for a long while (dating back to the Cold War). A member of the party’s National Executive Committee, Peter Willsman, has blamed Jewish supporters of Donald Trump for fabricating claims of anti-Semitism against Labour. Willsman then asked fellow members if

Watch: Jeremy Corbyn dodges questions on anti-Semitism

Labour’s anti-Semitism problem isn’t going away. But it seems Jeremy Corbyn is hoping it will do. When the Labour leader was asked whether he was the man to patch things up between the Jewish community and the party, Corbyn was somewhat lost for words: Reporter: ‘Are relations between the Labour leadership and the British Jewish community broken beyond repair? …Can you fix the relationship, Mr Corbyn?’ Jeremy Corbyn: ‘Good morning, nice to see you. Goodbye…Can you close the window please.’ Mr S. thinks this is hardly the best way for Corbyn to reassure people that he is taking the problem seriously…

Has Jeremy Corbyn got anything he wants to tell us?

Labour’s anti-Semitism row reached boiling point this week thanks to a leaked recording from a meeting of the party’s National Executive Committee. In it, Corbyn ally Peter Willsman suggests that Jewish ‘Trump fanatics’ are behind ‘duff’ accusations of Labour anti-Semitism and warned that ‘they can falsify social media very easily’. This comes at a particularly bad time for Jeremy Corbyn as Willsman is currently standing for re-election on to the NEC and is one of nine Momentum-backed candidates, known as the #JC9 (see Mr Steerpike’s guide to the candidates here). Moderate Labour MPs – including deputy leader Tom Watson – have been quick to condemn the comments along with a

Labour members must pick a side in the fight against anti-Semitism

Snap. It was a long time coming but it was always coming. Jeremy Corbyn, who has traded on an image of saintly anti-racism for his entire career, was finally confronted by someone who sees through it. Yesterday, Labour’s national executive committee adopted a new policy that rejected the full International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of anti-Semitism. Rabbis from across the spectrum had urged Labour to accept this definition; Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that failing to do so would send an unprecedented ‘message of contempt to the Jewish community’. Of course, that was the point. Labour does not like Jews very much; some within its ranks downright hate them; and

Anti-Brexit protesters turn on Labour leader: ‘Where’s Jeremy Corbyn?’

This time last year, Jeremy Corbyn was standing on the Pyramid stage at Glastonbury to adoring chants of ‘Oh-Jeremy-Corbyn’. Last weekend, Corbyn-mania attempting a resurgence at JezFest – Labour’s very own music festival – but failed to deliver the Labour leader another Glastonbury moment – with only faint chants to be heard. Happily, Corbyn can take heart that his name was chanted en masse this weekend. Only it wasn’t for the reason that his supporters had in mind. At the anti-Brexit People’s Vote march in London, protesters angrily chanted ‘where’s Jeremy Corbyn?’ https://twitter.com/Jack_Slater/status/1010519215034560513 It turns out that Corbyn was busy visiting a refugee camp. However, the point remains that had Corbyn

Brexit exposes the limits of Jeremy Corbyn’s radicalism

The left middle class is filled with anger as it sees the right, and, in its terms, the far right, triumph. Every time I write about Brexit I feel its fury pulsating around me. Brexit threatens the left’s core beliefs in international cooperation and anti-racism, while making its dream of ending austerity by reviving the economy unattainable. It must be resisted. Yet in a classic struggle against nationalist conservatism, Jeremy Corbyn, supposedly the most left-wing Labour leader ever, is at best an irrelevance and at worst an enemy when it comes to Brexit. His supporters sound like supporters of Tony Blair in the 1990s as they say Labour members must

Labour Live will cost the party more than money

The farce that is Labour Live rumbles on. With the Jezfest set to take place this weekend, the organisers are still struggling to shift tickets to the musical bonanza – which bills The Magic Numbers and Kate Osamor among its headliners. The Times today reports that ‘sales’ are still said to be stuck at around the 3,000 mark despite the venue – White Hart Lane Rec – having a 15,000 capacity. Labour MPs are growing increasingly concerned about the whole affair and asking Jenny Formby, the general secretary, who is currently footing the estimated £1million cost of the event. She has kept tight-lipped. But even if it is the Labour party