Spending some time in Britain this week, it strikes me that the strangest mainstream political leader in the Western world today, by a long distance, is Britain’s Opposition Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who took the British Labour Party to the brink of completely unexpected victory at the last British election almost a year ago.
It has received little coverage in Australia but Corbyn has been involved in recent months in one of the most damaging controversies of his at times bizarre leadership: the extreme anti-Semitism of his strand of the Labour Party, his own often warm endorsement of it, his deep reluctance to do anything about it and the sickening element of modern Labour this represents.
Corbyn has taken Labour further left than at any point in its history. He wants to renationalise a lot of industry and raise taxes, and he has a history of favouring unilateral nuclear disarmament, though that is not official party policy. Although a bearded old fuddy-duddy in manner, he embraces every twist of every far left identity issue and grievance mongering. He did so well last time partly through populism — promising to wipe out university debts and eliminate tuition fees, promising new public holidays, big pay rises for civil servants and much more. Part of his success came from low expectations. No one thought he had a chance when the campaign started and he received a very soft press.
One reason his personal history of extremism doesn’t count against him is that young people have no clue about the historical issues on which Corbyn routinely sided with the communists and the dictators. And his identity politics extremism is substantially forgiven by all but the right-wing media and, mostly shorn of meaningful context, regarded as vaguely hip or cool, or at least well intentioned, by young folk.
But the anti-Semitic words and actions of Corbyn’s supporters, and his own expressions of support for them, have been so gross and blatant recently that it has caused revulsion among many Labour faithful. Corbyn has long been closely associated with anti-Semites. Historically, he described the Gaza-based Hamas terrorists as “friends”, despite not only their gruesome terrorist murders but also the shocking and classic anti-Semitism of their charter.
Read the full article by Greg Sheridan in The Australian (subscription required).