Labour leader, his spin doctor and their spineless defence of Russia
TEN times that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and his spin chief Seumas Milne stood with Russia: 1 MR Corbyn brands Nato ‘the father of the Cold War’: ‘Nato, the father of the Cold War in the 1940s, should have shut up shop in 1990. It didn’t just carry on but reinvented itself as a force with global reach.’ (March 9, 2005) 2 THE Labour leader blames Russian aggression on Nato: ‘I am not condoning what Russia has done and is doing [in Ukraine], but everything has an equal and opposite reaction and so the more you build up Nato forces, the more of an excuse the Russians have.’ (August 11, 2015) 3 MR Corbyn encourages people to watch Russia Today, tweeting: ‘Try Russia Today. Free of Royal Wedding and more objective on Libya than most.’ (April 26, 2011) 4 HE calls sanctions against Russia ‘disproportionate’: ‘The reaction of the British Government, and of all governments, to incidents of illegal activity around the world has been rather strange and disproportionate. We have placed sanctions on Russia because of the activities in Ukraine and Crimea; Israel is in breach of a large number of UN resolutions, and it is clearly in breach of international law on both collective punishment and the settlement policy, but no sanctions whatever have been proposed.’ (July 17, 2014)
5 HE mourns the end of the Soviet Union: ‘I am concerned at the breakup of the Soviet Union and the leadership it gave.’ (September 24, 1991) 6 MR Corbyn talks down the threat posed by the former Soviet Union: ‘I do not believe that the former Soviet Union presented a threat, any more than I believe that the remains of the Soviet Union, or Russia, present an external threat now.’ (June 21, 1993) 7 HE accuses newspapers of feeding the British people ‘a diet of anti-Soviet propaganda’: ‘Not so long ago, when this country did not consider itself to be half at war with the Soviet Union, Britain and the Soviet Union considered that they had many mutual interests and many British soldiers died fighting Nazi-ism, as did many more Soviet soldiers. What I complain about is the way in which we are constantly fed a diet of pro-American propaganda from the Government, through the newspapers, and a diet of anti-Soviet propaganda.’ (June 1 , 19 6) MILNE blames Nato rather than Russia for military escalation: ‘This antiRussian incitement is dangerous folly. There certainly has been military expansionism. But it has overwhelmingly come from Nato, not Moscow. (March 4, 2015) 9 THE Labour spin chief defends Vladimir Putin’s annexation of Crimea as ‘clearly defensive’: ‘No Russian government could have acquiesced in such a threat from territory that was at the heart of both Russia and the Soviet Union. Putin’s absorption of Crimea and support for the rebellion in eastern Ukraine is clearly defensive.’ (April 30, 2014) 10 MILNE says the Soviet Union ‘helped to drive up welfare standards’: ‘For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality. It encompassed genuine idealism... Its existence helped to drive up welfare standards in the west.’ (February 16, 2006)