Sturgeon gives Corbyn praise for ‘getting people talking’
NICOLA STURGEON has heaped praise on Jeremy Corbyn, saying that the hard-Left candidate for the Labour leadership has “inspired” people.
The Scottish First Minister said she would “struggle” to vote for any of the Labour candidates but appeared to give her tacit backing to Mr Corbyn in an appearance at the Edinburgh International TV Festival.
Ms Sturgeon, who has similar views to Mr Corbyn on the Government’s austerity measures, is credited with destroying Labour in Scotland, leaving the party with just one MP north of the border.
Asked who she would vote for in the Labour leadership contest, she said: “I don’t know. I’d struggle to vote for any of them, to be honest. Jeremy Corbyn, give him his due, at least he’s got people talking, at least he’s got people inspired. That’s not to say I agree with him on many things.”
Mr Corbyn has been attacked by his rivals after appearing to blame Nato for prompting Russian aggression against Ukraine and backtracking on his previous calls for Britain to leave the alliance. During a live leadership debate yesterday, he was questioned by the other three candidates on whether or not he believed Britain should leave the military alliance.
Mr Corbyn told a hustings hosted by the Daily Mirror that Nato was pursuing an “expansion eastwards” that was encouraging Russia to counteract the threat. However, he rebuffed the suggestion by Liz Kendall that he believed the alliance was to blame for Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
He replied: “I’ve never said that. The point I am making is that if Nato sets itself an open target of expansion, the Russian military then say to their leaders, ‘We have to expand to counteract Nato.’”
When challenged by Andy Burnham on whether he would pull out of Nato, Mr Corbyn said he would have a “serious debate about the powers of Nato” but he abandoned previous calls for total withdrawal. He admitted there was not “an appetite as a whole for people to leave” and so would argue for Nato to “restrict its role”.
Mr Corbyn said: “I have criticisms of Nato, it’s a Cold War organisation and it should have been wound up in 1990 along with the Warsaw Pact.”
Mr Burnham has previously said he would quit if he was in a shadow cabinet calling for a withdrawal.
A majority of Mr Corbyn’s supporters, 51 per cent, believe the United States is the “greatest single threat to world peace” and one in four thinks a “secretive elite” controls the globe, according to YouGov research.
Some 74 per cent of the Labour leadership front-runner’s backers would identify themselves as Left-wing, around double the amount of any other candidates, YouGov found.
The vast majority of Mr Corbyn’s supporters also overwhelmingly back renationalising energy companies and the railway sector, decreasing private involvement in the NHS and redistributing wealth. The findings come after YouGov looked into the views and beliefs of 3,777 people eligible to vote in the Labour leadership election. In general, Mr Corbyn’s backers are less likely to be well-off or be in a higher social category than those of his rivals in the contest.