AS Labour’s ‘big beasts’ queued up to criticise Jeremy Corbyn yesterday, the front next leader said the party’s defeat at the 2015 General Election was the party “paying the price” for the war in Iraq.
The claim came during a campaign stop in Aberdeen, where the Labour leadership favourite also said he would work with the SNP to put “pressure” on the UK Government.
Addressing supporters, Corbyn said: “We’re all paying the price of Iraq. The Labour Party has paid the price of Iraq. I’m determined that we will learn that lesson and we will not go to war on behalf of whatever capricious US president happens to be in office at that time. “We won’t go to war on the basis of a lie, we won’t go to war knowing that one war leads to another and another and another.”
Corbyn’s claim came in the wake of a second attack by former Labour leader Tony Blair. Writing in The Guardian, Blair said a Corbyn win would see the Labour Party “walking eyes shut, arms outstretched over the cliff’s edge to the jagged rocks below”. Jack Straw also joined the chorus of Labour big guns condemning Corbyn, saying: “I don’t think anybody remotely believes that Jeremy Corbyn could win power.”
Although he refused to reply directly to Blair’s comments, during his speech Corbyn attacked the “yah boo sucks” and “name-calling” that has dominated the Labour leadership election.
More than 200 people squeezed into Aberdeen Arts Centre yesterday lunchtime to hear the veteran left winger on the first stop of his tour around Scotland.
Corbyn is now, by some distance, the favourite to win the contest. Internal polling from at least three leadership campaigns point toward the Islington North MP taking the top job. Ladbrokes yesterday claimed he had a 71 per cent chance of winning.
Yvette Cooper and Andy Burnham are fighting for second place, with Liz Kendall trailing in a distant fourth.
Cooper launched an attack on Corbyn yesterday, claiming his economic policies would increase inflation, cut investment and undermine growth. It was the first time Cooper had attacked Corbyn during the campaign.
He was offering “old solutions to old problems”, she said.
Liz Kendall, the Blairite candidate for the leadership, said if Corbyn won, Labour would be out of power for “a generation”, which she said was “without doubt over a decade”.
In his speech in Aberdeen,
Corbyn said the election for Labour leadership was much bigger than the party.
Corbyn said: “This is an election within the Labour Party, it is a debate, but it’s also about the kind of politics that we want in our society.
“It’s not a question of us as a movement or as a party looking back, it’s a question of us learning the lessons of those people that gave up and suffered so much for all of us and take it forward.
“People aren’t interested in the ‘yah boo sucks’ abusive politics.
“They’re interested in how they can mould and develop society in the future. Democracy is complicated, difficult, but very exciting.
“I feel that some of those people that resort to personal abuse, name-calling and all that are probably a bit nervous about the power of democracy.
“Probably 600,000 people will be taking part in this process in the next month. What is there not to like about that?
“That excitement, that mandate for change, peace, economic and social justice. That mandate for real democracy and real empowerment in our society.”
It was the first stop on Corbyn’s tour of Scotland. Last night saw the MP address supporters in Dundee. Today, Corbyn attends rallies in Edinburgh and Glasgow. So in demand was Corbyn’s Glasgow stop, organisers have switched to a bigger venue.
The visit to Scotland comes a day ahead of ballot papers arriving for the more than 600,000 people eligible to vote. The number of people with a vote in the race has more than tripled since the General Election. Around 190,000 have been recruited through trade unions, with 104,000 thought to have come through Unite. Around 6,000 have joined up in Scotland.
Yesterday, The Jewish Chronicle printed a scathing attack on
Corbyn, accusing him of associating and allegedly funding
Holocaust deniers. It said: “The JC rarely claims to speak for anyone other than ourselves. We are just a newspaper. But in this rare instance we are certain that we speak for the vast majority of British Jews in expressing deep foreboding at the prospect of Mr Corbyn’s election as Labour leader. In a nation where, thank heavens, racism and extremism are now regarded as beyond the pale, it is little short of astonishing that a man who chooses to associate with racists and extremists is about to become leader of one of our two main parties and could conceivably become prime minister.”
Corbyn’s team flatly denied the charges, saying: “The Holocaust was the most vile period in human history.The Jewish people were scapegoated by the Nazi Party. Some people in Britain, including Jeremy’s own parents, stood in Cable Street in 1936 to halt the rise of Nazism in our country.
“Only by unity of all people and all faiths can we defeat racism and build an inclusive, tolerant society.”
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