Johnson takes aim at Corbyn over Labour’s stance on Nato
BORIS Johnson questioned Jeremy Corbyn’s commitment to Britain’s defences after he took a fresh swipe at Nato.
Ahead of the Nato leaders’ summit in Watford today, Mr Johnson said it was extraordinary Mr Corbyn was still questioning the value of a military alliance that has kept the peace for 70 years.
The Labour leader is a longstanding critic of Nato and said in 2014 that he wished the alliance ‘did not exist’.
In a round of interviews yesterday, Mr Corbyn insisted that Nato membership had been ‘accepted by the party’ and would continue under a Labour government.
But, in a swipe at Nato, he said the alliance had ‘deepened’ the Cold War with the former Soviet Union.
Mr Corbyn also refused to say whether he was personally committed to membership of Nato.
Asked if he still wanted to pull out of the alliance, he ducked the question, saying: ‘It is a Cold War product, it was set up after the Second World War.
‘It actually developed from the Atlantic Charter and the whole thing was tit for tat between the Warsaw Pact and Nato and that led to a deepening of the Cold War.
‘Nato still exists. We will be members of it and I will be a voice that I hope will aim to de-escalate tensions and improve dialogue.’
Mr Corbyn also faced quesbeen tions over his support for MI5, after it emerged that senior allies, including shadow home secretary Diane Abbott and shadow chancellor John McDonnell, had both backed calls for the intelligence agency to be scrapped.
In 2015, Mr McDonnell backed a manifesto from the Socialist Campaign for a Labour Victory which called for MI5 to be ‘disbanded’.
A smiling Mr McDonnell was pictured holding a copy of the group’s demands, although he later said this did not mean he supported them. Mr Corbyn has also associated with the group in the past.
Miss Abbott signed a Commons motion in 1989 which called for ‘the abolition of conspiratorial groups like MI5 and Special Branch’.
Yesterday, Mr Corbyn told ITV’s This Morning show that Labour would not abolish MI5, but did want to make it more ‘accountable’.
The Prime Minister said Mr Corbyn’s latest comments showed he was unfit for office. Mr Johnson said Nato had proved ‘vital for our security’ over the last 70 years.
He added: ‘There is a stark contrast between our approach, which sees the value of Nato as the guarantor of our security, and that of Jeremy Corbyn, who wants to disband Nato.’
Mr Johnson said that pulling out of Nato would be ‘an act of great strategic selfishness and folly’.
Labour strategists fear that Mr Corbyn’s long-standing antipathy to Nato is a potential vote-loser among traditional supporters.
Mr Corbyn ducked repeated questions yesterday about whether Nato now has his personal support. The BBC’s Jeremy Vine told him: ‘I feel your heart is not in this. It’s not, is it?’ Mr Corbyn replied: ‘With the greatest respect, Jeremy, you can’t see into my heart.’