Ever since his unexpected rise to British Labour Party leader, veteran socialist MP Jeremy Corbyn has faced sustained attacks and smears from the media, Tories and the right-wing of his own party. But over the past month, the attacks have become an unprecedented avalanche.
The slanders have ranged from widely discredited Cold War-era slurs about Corbyn as a supposed Soviet spy, to allegations of “being a Putin stooge” for refusing to back Theresa May’s expulsion of Russian diplomats without waiting for real proof over the Skripal case, to sustained accusations of failing to tackle serious allegations of anti-Semitism within Labour Party ranks.
The campaign over anti-Semitism, probably the most successful, entered the realm of absurdity when the media and political opponents slammed Corbyn attending an event by a group of left-wing Jews for Passover. Having slammed Corbyn for not taking the concerns of Jewish people seriously enough, now he was attacked for meeting the “wrong” sort of Jews.
The accusations have largely fallen flat, thanks partly to the Labour leader’s history of fighting against social evils of racism and anti-Semitism and his principled stance on foreign affairs.
Nevertheless, it has further exposed the extent of fear and desperation among the minority Conservative government, the corporate media and the Labour Party right to see the back of Labour’s most left-wing leader in modern times.
Chris Williamson is the Labour Party MP for Derby North and the President of the Labour Friends of Progressive Latin America. A strong supporter of Corbyn’s project of transforming British society, he sat down with Green Left Weekly’s Denis Rogatyuk to discuss some of Labour’s important campaigns.
Read the article in Green Left Weekly.