The Scottish Mail on Sunday

Use your vote to honour the victims of the most murderous creed to besmirch the past century By ANDREW ROBERTS

- LAndrew Roberts’s latest book, Leadership In War, is published by Penguin at £20.

IN LESS than two weeks the British people will have the honour of being able to do something quite remarkable in history – deliver a stinging, unmistakea­ble rebuke to an evil ideology.

Putting a cross in a box on the Election ballot paper for any party other than Labour will pay tribute to the billions of innocents whose lives were ruined by Marxism and the 100million whose lives were ended by it under dictators such as Stalin and Mao.

For make no mistake, today’s Labour Party is run by unrepentan­t Marxists.

Marxism has always ended horribly for ordinary people. Let us not forget the killing fields of Cambodia, the Siberian gulags and the ‘re-education’ camps of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, among its many other horrors.

Despite this, Jeremy Corbyn has remained an unashamed devotee of Karl Marx.

Indeed, in July 2015 Corbyn told BBC presenter Andrew Marr that he found Marx ‘absolutely fascinatin­g’ because he ‘analysed what was happening in a quite brilliant way’ and he had read ‘quite a bit’ of his work and wished he’d read more.

What is particular­ly concerning about Corbyn is that, as a lifelong and committed Marxist, he has spent his time befriendin­g Britain’s enemies, wherever they can be found. Serious questions remain about what was said at his repeated meetings with Czechoslov­akian state security spies in London at the height of the Cold War, so it’s small wonder that Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, used these pages last week to warn Britons not to allow Corbyn to become Prime Minister on the grounds of national security.

In light of Friday’s London Bridge terror attack, what are we to make of his long-standing refusal to back the policy of ‘shoot to kill’, even if the individual was wearing what appeared to be a suicide vest?

In one BBC interview in 2015, Corbyn said: ‘I am not happy with the shoot-to-kill policy in general. I think that is quite dangerous.’

How could we possibly allow this man to be in charge of our security? Does he think the firearms officer on Friday did the right thing? Or, if he believes those actions were wrong, Corbyn must let us know what he would have done under the same circumstan­ces.

Last week, in that car-crash television interview with Andrew Neil, Corbyn reiterated his no-shoot stance during a discussion on the assassinat­ion of Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi by US special forces.

‘I would take the appropriat­e decisions at that time if I knew the circumstan­ces,’ he said impatientl­y, before trying to turn the conversati­on to one of his favourite subjects: blaming the West for IS. It was more muted, perhaps, than his previous interviews, but no less morally weak.

Corbyn’s stance on al-Baghdadi signals his wider foreign policy views, which are hopelessly blinkered by an unswerving sense of anti-Americanis­m. For Corbyn, it makes no difference whether the Republican­s or Democrats occupy the White House.

This ingrained hatred towards America led him to describe the 2011 killing of Osama Bin Laden by US special forces as ‘a tragedy’, saying the Al Qaeda leader should instead have been brought to trial. In a rant on Iranian State TV – that bastion of human rights and fair judicial process – Corbyn continued: ‘The World Trade Center [terrorist attack] was a tragedy, the [UN-authorised] attack on Afghanista­n was a tragedy, the war on Iraq was a tragedy.’

And it has resurfaced most recently in the ludicrous conspiracy theory that Boris Johnson is ‘selling off our NHS to the Americans’. Basing his so-called ‘revelation­s’ on documents relating to preliminar­y trade talks where no politician­s and only low-level officials were present, shows how he is prepared to shoehorn anything into his rigid world view.

And this is why he is totally unfit for public office – because his deep commitment to a socialist future rides roughshod over the facts.

Similarly, Corbyn’s hatred of Nato – which has underpinne­d our national security for 70 years – has led him to blame it for ‘provoking’ Russia’s annexation of Crimea and invasion of Ukraine. He claims to support human rights but is never heard denouncing Venezuela, Cuba and Iran – all serial offenders. Why? Because these countries support his totalitari­an vision, and above all Corbyn is primarily concerned with pursuing his singlemind­ed ideology, no matter the human cost. This was evident when he invited members of Sinn Fein to the House of Commons only weeks after the IRA tried to assassinat­e Margaret Thatcher and wipe out her entire Government in the 1984 Brighton bombing.

As for domestic and economic policy, the outlook would be dire under Corbyn. During this Election campaign, he has characteri­sed free markets, free enterprise and entreprene­urial capitalism as ‘tax dodgers, dodgy landlords, bad bosses and big polluters’.

The Labour manifesto shows Corbyn still dreams of nationalis­ing the means of production, distributi­on and exchange. He pays no heed to the lessons of history, which show us that this method of public ownership comprehens­ively failed when it was tried in the 1970s.

Historical­ly, some manifestos have promised a lot and underdeliv­ered because there was never any intention of fulfilling such promises. Corbyn’s manifesto, however, is not a bag of freebies to attract votes. It is what he truly believes and, taken together, constitute­s nothing less than a Marxist war on our civil society.

But it isn’t just the wealthy that Marxists seek to stamp out. Another main aim is to manipulate the news agenda and control the media.

Corbyn has already publicly stated he doesn’t believe in individual­s having the right to own newspapers. Just last week, Labour frontbench­er Barry Gardiner tried to silence – to Corbyn’s evident pleasure – ITV journalist Libby Wiener when she tried to ask a question about antisemiti­sm. If handed the keys to No 10, the Labour leader could have a chilling impact on our cherished free press.

It is claimed at the time that every General Election is the most consequent­ial for decades. Normally it is not true. It didn’t really matter whether people such as John Major, Gordon Brown or Theresa May became PM or not. But that is not the case today, with Corbyn as one of only two people who could be crossing the threshold of No10 on Friday week.

Corbyn’s anti-nuclear, anti-Nato and anti-American record makes it impossible for any genuinely patriotic, civilised Briton to vote Labour.

So make a statement on behalf of the 100million victims of Marxism by voting against this latest manifestat­ion of the most murderous creed to besmirch the past century.

Make it so damning a message that the Labour Party, in its defeat and humiliatio­n, is forced to listen and return to being the pluralist, patriotic party it was for the 115 years before being taken over by Corbyn’s Communist clique.

Corbyn’s manifesto is nothing less than a Marxist war on society His hatred of America led him to say the killing of Bin Laden was a tragedy

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