Corbyn is undermining Nato says Labour peer
LABOUR leader Jeremy Corbyn was slammed by one of his own peers yesterday for undermining Nato.
Lord West criticised Mr Corbyn’s attitude towards the international defence alliance in an essay published by the think tank Policy Exchange.
The former First Sea Lord compared the party leader with former Labour prime minister Clement Attlee, who co-founded Nato in 1949.
He wrote that the contrast
between Mr Attlee’s pursuit of an international system of defence and Mr Corbyn’s stance “is as staggering as it is tragic”.
The criticism comes in the wake of Mr Corbyn’s refusal to condemn Russia after the nerve agent attack on double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury two weeks ago.
The founding principle of Nato is that an attack on one member is an attack on all. But in the past Mr
Corbyn has described Nato as a “danger to the world” and refused to guarantee that he would “automatically” send troops to defend a Nato ally under attack.
In 1989 he also called for Britain to leave the organisation.
But in a foreword to the essay, entitled In Defence Of Collective Security, Lord West wrote: “The role that the Labour Party played in the creation of the rules-based international order should never be forgotten.
“By leading the way in the
creation of Nato, Clement Attlee’s Labour government sought to create a system of collective defence that was built to last over the long term.
“This difference with today is as staggering as it is tragic.
“Those now leading the Labour Party have consistently criticised Nato, and yet recent Russian behaviour sees a growing number of challenges to international law and deliberate attempts to threaten and undermine those within the Nato alliance.”