For some time now, the SKWAWKBOX has been predicting privately that it was only a matter of time before desperate, integrity-free Tories or their mouthpieces tried to ‘weaponise’ Venezuela to attack Jeremy Corbyn. They’re scraping the bottom of the barrel and coming up empty on everything else, so it was inevitable.
Sure enough, Tory Minister Alan Duncan got the ‘desperation short-straw’ and was all over BBC News this morning.
A sweating and uncomfortable-looking Mr Duncan tried hard to appear outraged about Venezuela, demanding that Jeremy Corbyn ‘publicly condemn’ Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, ‘or else we’ll have a very good idea what he stands for‘.
Tories don’t have hearts, of course, but if Duncan did have one, it wouldn’t have been in it because even he must know how desperate it sounds. Or perhaps he was just cognisant of his own, less than spotless track record on the matter of protest and how to handle it.
Let’s leave aside for moemnt the very pertinent question of how accurate and balanced the reporting of the situation in Venezuela by the BBC and others actually is – it’s already on record, for example, that very similar attempts to bring down Maduro’s predecessor were made by outside powers under corporate influence.
Even without that, it’s extremely interesting to watch Tory politicians and mouthpieces try to use the troubles of another country to attack a politician that they’ve been unable to land a blow on for anything in this country.
Especially when they’ve expressed… ‘interesting‘ views on lawful protest in this country.
You see, we already know what Jeremy Corbyn stands for – fairness, justice, an end to austerity, a society ‘for the many’ – because he’s always been the same and has steadfastly refused to ‘change hats’ for short-term political gain. Unlike a certain Mr Duncan.
So the SKWAWKBOX has a question for Alan Duncan – and any other cookie-cutter, arrogant Tory politician or media drone currently involved in the burgeoning attempt to tar Corbyn by association with a government trying to resist violent revolution on the other side of the world.
When he answers it properly, then he might just be in a place where he’s entitled to demand a response of anyone else:
Will you condemn the Venezuelan rioters?
In June, London saw the ‘Day of Rage’ protest – which passed off almost entirely peacefully – where protesters demanded, among other things, that the government take proper action over the Grenfell Tower tragedy.
The Murdoch-owned S*n was not happy. Under a sub-heading of:
the rag quoted one Alan Duncan:
These are obviously agitators with two decades of form. It is disgusting beyond measure that they should exploit the Grenfell Tower fire for their own revolutionary politics.
But that’s mild by comparison with an earlier opinion expressed by Mr Duncan. In 2008 he spoke to right-wing Telegraph TV about people outside Parliament who were peacefully protesting against the planned expansion of Heathrow Airport:
Protesting peacefully about an unwanted airport expansion or against a government that can only stand up by bribing Irish politicians?
Well, that’s ‘agitating‘, ‘revolutionary politics‘ – and you’re bloody well lucky not to be shot or gassed.
Taking to the streets to build barricades, burn properties, throw fire-bombs, fire stones and other projectiles at police – in order to bring down a democratically-elected government?
Apparently that’s fine.
You’d almost think that Duncan and the Tories were cynically and hypocritically grasping at anything they think they can weaponise against Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour cause.
Surely not.
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