The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
Fox goes gunning for Labour leader
Jeremy Corbyn is the “very dangerous” leader of a Labour party that has gone “completely mad”, Cabinet minister Liam Fox has warned.
The International Trade Secretary said the Corbyn-supporting Momentum movement were “extremists” and warned of the “damage” it could do to the country.
Dr Fox also used an appearance at a Conservative Party conference fringe event to warn about the dangers of protectionism in an apparent reference to the rise of Donald Trump in the United States.
In one of the strongest attacks yet by a Tory minister on Mr Corbyn, Dr Fox warned it would be a mistake to dismiss Labour as a joke that could not win power.
“I do not find Jeremy Corbyn funny. I think it’s extremely dangerous for the Conservative Party or any other political grouping to say that this party has now taken such leave of its senses that it couldn’t possibly be elected,” he said.
“Electoral circumstances are unpredictable, we know that from history.
“This is a very dangerous leader of a very dangerous party at the present time, a party that doesn’t believe in Nato, that would abandon our nuclear weaponry, that doesn’t believe in most of the accepted rules of our economics.”
Labour’s official policy is to support the renewal of the Trident nuclear weapons system and its commitment to Nato, but Mr Corbyn has a long-held belief in unilateral disarmament and has questioned the value of maintaining “huge land-based forces”.
In a defence of free trade, Dr Fox declined to single out Republican presidential hopeful Mr Trump by name but hit out at the rise in protectionism.
“There is a temptation for politicians to pander to the short-term view that protectionism will be the answer, but it never really is the answer,” he said.
“In the debate in the United States at the moment, in particular, you are getting much less of a free trade flavour than I have ever known in any election.”