It is possible that nobody outside the United Kingdom has noticed that we have been going through a very lengthy and painful process: the election of several party leaders. So far we have done with the Liberal-Democrats and with the Scottish Labour Party (in Scotland three of the main parties are now led by women so one can only wonder what John Knox would have made of that) and are still without a national Labour Party leader. Members of the Scottish Labour Party may have voted for their leader but they are also voting for the national one. Much to everybody’s astonishment the front runner by a long way is Jeremy Corbyn, a hitherto little known extreme left-wing MP, who still holds economic and political views that had been shown to be useless and harmful by the 1970s and cannot possibly be relevant to the modern Britain, who consistently supported the IRA and whose buddies in other countries are, without exception, tyrannical, bloodthirsty, Islamic fundamentalist, anti-Semitic and, in some exceptional cases, Holocaust deniers. In a couple of weeks he may well be the Leader of Her Majesty’s no longer loyal opposition. The mind boggles.
Ah yes, we are told by people who support him and others who hastily add that they do not, he has principles and that is very attractive in the modern unprincipled political world. Needless to say, many of the people who say this scream abuse at the very mention of Margaret Thatcher’s name and yet if ever there was a principled politician, it was she. On the other hand, as all politicians in democracies she also recognized that other people had other ideas and principles, even people in her own party, and their support, too, was necessary.
My own view is that just having principles is hardly sufficient. One needs to know what those principles are and, in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, they are devastating for this country and our Western allies. Let me just add that as a little known and long ago sidelined backbencher, Mr Corbyn has, until now, achieved nothing in his political career. He has made speeches and appeared a great deal on Russia Today and Press TV as well as public platforms that he shared with various terrorists and other jolly people listed above. One cannot help wondering how those principles will stand up to the realities of party leadership.
Here is my blog on the subject that might be of interest to American and other readers.