The right-wing press in an apparently coordinated attack just in time for the weekend political programmes, has mounted a smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn with headlines suggesting he had untoward contacts with a Czechoslovakian agent masquerading as a diplomat.
This line has been pushed in spite of the fact that even the S*n couldn’t help admitting that Czech records state that no useful information could be gained from Corbyn – and the obvious fact that, as an obscure back-bencher considered radical by the Establishment – he was not in a position to have any sensitive information. This would have been perfectly obvious to the Czechoslovakians.
The smears – which look desperate – also ignore the fact that Svetlana Ptáčníková, the head of the Czech intelligence service, has refuted the claims:
Mr. Corbyn was neither registered [by the StB] as a collaborator, nor does this [his alleged collaboration] stem from archive documents
But there’s an additional, obvious reason the right-wing claims are nonsense: Corbyn would not have had any opportunity.
Last year, in an attempt to smear Corbyn during the General Election campaign, the very same right-wing press revealed that MI5 spied on Corbyn over a long period:
In fact, MI5 was not the only agency spying on Corbyn and other left-wingers.
Dan Lomas, Programme Leader, MA Intelligence and Security Studies, University of Salford, told Yahoo News last year that in 2015, Peter Francis, a former officer in the Metropolitan Police’s controversial Special Demonstration Squad revealed that his unit monitored Corbyn, Tony Benn and others for their ‘links with radical causes’.
As a perceived radical from the start, Corbyn would have been watched closely from the very beginning of his parliamentary career – and probably long before that.
So when, exactly, would he have had time, opportunity or freedom to do any alleged spying when he was constantly being spied on?
Finally, Corbyn is a member of the Privy Council. As the book Watching the Watchers, Parliament and the Intelligence Services points out, Privy Councillors are privy (of course) to the most sensitive state intelligence information.
It’s unthinkable that, having watched Corbyn for decades, the intelligence services would not have flagged any concerns before Corbyn’s induction into the Privy Council.
Comment:
The right-wing smears are laughable nonsense and reflect only the desperation of the Establishment to find some smear – any smear – to undermine Corbyn’s stature and popularity. It’s more likely to increase both in the eyes of most UK voters.
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Andy Sinclair comment: BBC: Jeremy Corbyn was a “useful idiot” because he unwittingly a Czech agent in 1986. But the Robert Mueller indictment is “good news for President Trump” because it concedes that when his aides met Kremlin agents last year they did so “unwittingly.”
BBC Radio 4 just said this (about the Mueller indictment)
It’s somewhat reminiscent of the ‘Kinnock’s Kremlin Connection’ smear that Andrew Neil contrived for The Sunday Times a few weeks before the 1992 election when he was editor. It was completely baseless, but that didn’t stop him and his SS buddies from placing it as the main front-page story along with a couple of pages inside. And needless to say, the rest of the right-wing press got on board of course.
But THAT’S what fascists do – ie lie and fabricate and vilify and smear and demonise the political opposition.
Yes is almost funny the desperate attacks on JC (and thus on what we stand for) which shows we are perhaps winning the arguments.
Perhaps they have nothing to say so resort to trivia and the broken record technique. Oh and the Right Wing in Labour’s latest ruse (those born again champions of members democracy – well on one issue which they think suits them) could only get 17,000 people (about 2.9% of the total membership) to call for members to have a say on Brexit. Perhaps what they want is to keep the single market (and hence Neo-Liberalism) and perhaps they see their job as getting crumbs for working people whilst they have interesting and rewarding careers? But I think the majority now want to transform society with JC for the many. I think it is time to turn to a new page.
“Well, would you believe it”? The right, are shooting themselves in the foot yet again! Making enemies, of those who can smell a rat, when they read and hear their “BS”! Unlike the left, who, when asked by the right wing press and media, give a straight answer to the question. This is the reason why, we don’t see to many MPs from the left, being invited to appear on the BBC or any other political TV program for that “FACT”!
“FOR THE MANY, NOT THE FEW”.