Comrades reunited ... Corbyn’s date with Adams and McGuinness
SMILING for the camera, Sinn Fein boss Gerry Adams and his deputy Martin McGuinness have coffee with Labour leadership candidate Jeremy Corbyn.
Adams tweeted a picture of yesterday’s meeting inside the Houses of Parliament, with the words: ‘With Jeremy Corbyn and the comrades’.
It was not the first time the pair have been pictured together at Westminster.
Weeks after the IRA bombed the Tory Party conference in Brighton in 1984, Mr Corbyn invited Adams and other members of Sinn Fein to the Commons. And in 1996 he helped Adams plug his autobiography inside Parliament.
The Islington North MP has previously been criticised for his choice of political friends. He invited representatives from Hamas and Hezbollah to the Commons, describing the extremists as ‘friends’.
Yesterday’s picture could be damaging for Mr Corbyn, who polls make front-runner for the Labour Party leadership.
McGuinness has admitted being secondin-command of the IRA in Londonderry at the age of 21, but has always insisted he never killed anyone and that he left the terrorist organisation in 1974 – claims that are disputed by his critics. Adams has repeatedly denied being in the IRA, despite claims that he was a member of its leadership from the 1970s onwards.
Sinn Fein MPs do not take up their seats in the Commons because they refuse to swear an oath of allegiance to the Queen.
But they do get access to the Houses of Parliament’s many cafes, bars and restaurants – as well as MPs’ expenses.
Last night it was pointed out that the Sinn Fein politicians were at Westminster to meet David Cameron last night to discuss welfare cuts.
Lord Tebbit, whose wife was paralysed in the Brighton bomb, told the Mail earlier this week he had ‘contempt’ for the views of IRA sympathiser Mr Corbyn.
Labour would have effectively ‘committed suicide’ if the veteran socialist is elected leader. ‘If the Labour party elect this idiot as their leader, it shows they’re not interested in being in government,’ the former Tory Cabinet minister said.
‘There is quite a large mass of Labour voters who would also repudiate all that the idiot stands for.’
Labour grandees have been privately alarmed at the surge in support for Mr Corbyn. And Matt Singh, a polling analyst who was one of the few to predict a Tory majority at May’s election, said Mr Corbyn’s popularity may not yet have peaked.
He pointed to an explosion of Twitter followers for Mr Corbyn, a rise in constituency Labour party nominations and private polls which had showed the hard Left candidate ahead of his rivals.
The result of the leadership contest will be announced on September 12.