Corbyn DIDN’T ‘not recognise’ Becky L-B’s spending plans. More ‘moderate’ misogynism

There is a definite strategy in play at the moment – if you can call something so vile and base a strategy – by the pseudo-Labour right to undermine prominent women in Jeremy Corbyn’s Shadow Cabinet.

The latest attack – a ‘twofer’ that also attempts to ridicule Corbyn himself – is another hatchet-piece on the PoliticsHome website. And it’s not the first time that site, which is edited by a former Sun ‘journalist’, has attacked Labour women – the same site featured a ‘shaming’ article that gave a platform to Blairite MPs to mouth off at Diane Abbott and Shami Chakrabarti for the ‘crime’ of preferring to go for a drink rather than listen to the right-wingers moan at a meeting:

The piece references two BBC broadcasts – a Radio 4 interview this morning between Nick Robinson and Jeremy Corbyn and a Marr interview on Sunday with Rebecca Long-Bailey. It claims that Corbyn rejected figures that Ms L-B had ‘endorsed’.

And, of course, it completely misrepresents both.

Marr had attempted to ambush Long-Bailey with a set of figures said to reflect Labour spending plans, unveiling a board with figures chalked on it and stating:

We’ve totted them up

In other words, it wasn’t Labour’s table or £63bn total, let alone Rebecca Long-Bailey’s – and at a moment’s notice, Marr expected her to say whether they were ‘broadly accurate’. L-B’s response was intelligent and hedged with caution. She agreed they were, but with the caveat:

but these are based on forecasts, so the position would change should we get into government.

She then went on to talk about the Tories’ £70bn estimated tax-giveaway, rather than Labour’s spending numbers. Intelligent stuff.

On Radio 4 this morning, Nick Robinson asked Corbyn about spending plans and Corbyn responded. Here’s the exchange with the most relevant parts highlighted:

Is it the case that you’re now saying to the country that you’ll spend £60 or £70 billion more than the Tories and you will pay for that by taxing £60 billion more.

Note: Long-Bailey had not mentioned Labour’s tax plans, only the Tories – and while she agreed Marr’s figures were “broadly accurate but based on projections that will change if Labour gets into government”, she had not put a figure on how much Labour would tax.

Corbyn – again, intelligently – refused to let Robinson pin a figure on him that was not a Labour calculation and was at best provisional anyway:

I don’t recognise the £60bn figure but what I would say is that corporation tax was 28% and is.. now dropping to 17%… on the calculation of OBR (Office of Budget Responsibility) figures, by 2022 £70bn will have been given to corporations and the wealthiest. We would seek to raise taxation income at the top end rather than at the bottom… we would reverse the corporation tax cut…

but our programme is not complete so the figure that was used on the Marr show is not one we recognise.

That’s it. No ‘confusion’. No undermining of his front-bencher. No conflict or contradiction. Just two intelligent Labour politicians refusing to allow two (known Tory) BBC interviewers to ‘frame the narrative’ and get them to accept figures that they hadn’t worked out themselves and could be used against them later if they allowed it.

Professionalism, in other words – the very thing the Blairites would pride themselves on and say Corbyn and his team lacked.

Except they don’t lack it and the right-wingers are so morally and intellectually bankrupt that they will twist anything to fabricate an issue, even if it makes them complete hypocrites.

So, it’s very clear that what we don’t have is any kind of Labour ‘confusion’ or problem. What we do have is a politics site run by a former Murdoch-Scum staffer publishing an article by a ‘journalist’ referenced by vehemently anti-Corbyn Progress director Richard Angell on his personal website.

A ‘journalist’, by the way, whose entire journalistic experience before Politics Home was four short work-experience placements at local newspapers and free publications, as his own CV page attests:

Hardly Woodward and Bernstein. When the pseudo-Labour saboteurs and their media helpers are reduced to this level of desperate mischief-making, every attempt they make only makes them look pathetic.

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