CORBYN’S NUCLEAR NIGHTMARE
Labour leader humiliated in TV debate after refusing to say he’d defend UK with Trident
‘This was really spine-chilling’
JEREMY Corbyn last night refused to say whether he would defend Britain from a nuclear attack.
The pacifist Labour leader was heckled by a live TV audience as he repeatedly ducked questions about his attitude to the UK’s nuclear defences.
In a nightmare performance, he also struggled to answer questions about his sympathy for terrorist groups including the IRA, Hezbollah and Hamas.
He was pilloried for his spendthrift policies, with one audience member likening Labour’s manifesto to ‘a letter to Santa Claus’ – and he was challenged over his failure to expel his friend Ken Livingstone from the party over anti-semitic remarks.
Mr Corbyn, vice-president of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, was left floundering on the BBC’s Question Time show as members of the audience peppered him with questions about his soft stance on defence.
He began sweating heavily during the exchanges after initially saying he would never approve ‘first use’ of Britain’s Trident weapons. But he then refused at least six times to say whether he would countenance using nuclear weapons to defend the UK from attack.
His stonewalling prompted an angry reaction from one audience member, who directly challenged Mr Corbyn, saying: ‘Would you use it as second use? Or would you let North Korea or some idiot in Iran to bomb us and say, “Oh, we’d better start talking.” You’d be too late.’ You would allow them to do it.’
Mr Corbyn replied: ‘Of course not,’ prompting the question: ‘Well, how would you stop them?’
The Labour leader said he would ‘promote disarmament in Korea’, sparking another heckle of ‘impossible’.
Another man addressed Mr Corbyn’s support for unilateral disarmament, saying: ‘I would rather have it and not use it than not have it at all, especially in this day and age.’
Mr Corbyn was asked if he would like to respond and muttered: ‘No.’
The Labour leader insisted Britain would never face attack because he would pursue peace through diplomatic means. When another audience member asked him: ‘Are you saying you will never, ever push the red button?’ Mr Corbyn scowled and replied: ‘I think we have discussed this at some length.’
Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson described Mr Corbyn’s refusal to defend Britain as ‘spine-chilling’.
‘I thought it was really spine-chilling to hear Jeremy Corbyn announce that all Labour’s support for our nuclear deterrent, all Labour’s support for our armed forces was completely meaningless because when it came to the business of defending this country he wouldn’t do it,’ he said.
Mr Corbyn also came under fire over his sympathy with terror groups, including the IRA, which waged a 30-year ‘war’ against the British state.
One of the audience asked Mr Corbyn: ‘You said you didn’t support the IRA, you’ve also supported Hamas and other terrorist organisations. How do you expect the British people to vote for you when you have supported them?’
Mr Corbyn said: ‘I have not supported any of those organisations. What I have said is … if you are to bring about a peace process anywhere…there has to be a coming together.’
The audience member shot back: ‘You were talking to them when they were killing our people.’ The Labour leader said: ‘I was talking to representatives of the republican movement, yes.’