"Jeremy Corbyn Supports The IRA!!!" An organisation that these days, it might be impossible to join. You get to die in it if you have been in it for donkey's years, but that is all. New recruits not welcome. I could be wrong. But I doubt it.
Rather like the Labour Party as Corbyn's opponents would prefer it, in fact.
Does the Queen support the IRA, then? She has them to stay overnight at her house.
Corbyn was on a panel with a DUP MP at a Sinn Féin cultural festival earlier this week. The world moves on.
In fact, that corner of it did so a long time ago.
That DUP MP, who in the meantime has done a year as Lord Mayor of Belfast, was 13 at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.
That DUP MP, who in the meantime has done a year as Lord Mayor of Belfast, was 13 at the time of the Good Friday Agreement.
As for the Falkland Islands, Corbyn has done more than any other MP for the Chagossians. There was no referendum for them.
They cannot even live on their islands, still less are they lavished with treats purely because they were once invaded due to the incompetence of Margaret Thatcher.
Never trust anyone who professes to support the Falkland Islanders, but who does not support the Chagossians. Most of the bellowing pro-Falklands voices in Britain have never heard of Chagos.
Never trust anyone who professes to support the Falkland Islanders, but who does not support the Chagossians. Most of the bellowing pro-Falklands voices in Britain have never heard of Chagos.
Thanks to the cuts by the present Government, we could not now mount a second Falklands Campaign, for which there would in any case be very little public support in Britain, where most people would take the view that a tiny community at the other end of the world had had its one go at taking this country to war.
But twice? Now, that really would be a bit much. I am not condoning that view. I am simply stating it as political reality. "What do we get out of this?", people would ask. "What have they ever done for us?"
If Unionists in Northern Ireland were still as they once were, then that would long ago have become the overwhelmingly predominant mainland view of them, too.
But as it is, rejectionist candidates secure negligible numbers of votes, mostly cast by elderly adherents to a Protestant fundamentalism that is rapidly declining in influence. Rejectionists on the other side do even worse.
Within a day of each other, they recently staged 1980s throwback funerals for prominent figures in Stroke City. But that was what they were: 1980s throwbacks for the dead, one of whom was 86.
(Stroke City is a fascinating example of a city-state at the outer extremities. It is in Northern Ireland, but its Unionists no less than its Nationalists seem largely unaware of that fact. It can see into the Republic, but its Nationalists no less than its Unionists are wary of that, too. Visitors from both are welcome to its shops and to its hospitals. But they will always be just that: visitors.)
Corbyn's position on Northern Ireland has been that of the Conservative Party since 1993, 1985, 1973, take your pick. It has been that of the Ulster Unionist Party since 1998, and that of the Democratic Unionist Party since 2007.
There used to be a certain amount of Fleet Street opposition to it, by people in the same position as Irish-Americans who professed to oppose the "betrayal". But even that has almost entirely gone by the by. The writers on the right-wing papers follow the Tory line at least as often as they set it.
Look out for that when almost every single one of them gets behind whatever deal David Cameron brings home from the EU, and duly advocates a Yes vote in the referendum.
When that specific deal goes before a Special Congress of the TUC and a Special Conference of the Labour Party, then the result will be very different indeed, especially under the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
But then, the money for the No Campaign is going to have to come from somewhere. With big business lined up on the Yes side, which speaks for itself, that leaves only the unions. As much as anything else, and very intentionally, the Government's attacks on trade union funding are pre-emptive attacks on the No Campaign.
In the meantime, if Argentina wanted the Falkland Islands, then she could have them. No one could stop her, and it is possible that no one would wish to, at least not enough to do anything about it; as much as anything else, the whole situation has always been among the many proofs that the deterrent value of British nuclear weapons was zero.
But Argentina is playing a much longer game, and that is about economic rivalry with another G20 country.
For some years now, whenever this question has come before international bodies, then certain countries with the Queen as Head of State have voted with Argentina. "Anti-colonialism" is the argument from the heart. But integration into the economic life of their own hemisphere is the argument from the head.
Corbyn, of unrivalled authority, needs to demand a referendum among the Chagos Islanders on the renewal or otherwise of a previous Labour Government's shameful 50-year lease of their homeland to the Americans, who have used it for torture and illegal abduction, in 1965.
A referendum on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands must be held on the same day, Corbyn should insist. And vice versa: no referendum in the South Atlantic without a referendum in the Indian Ocean. How would his detractors respond to that?
While he was about it, he might also look into the situation on Ascension Island. He knows where I am.
But twice? Now, that really would be a bit much. I am not condoning that view. I am simply stating it as political reality. "What do we get out of this?", people would ask. "What have they ever done for us?"
If Unionists in Northern Ireland were still as they once were, then that would long ago have become the overwhelmingly predominant mainland view of them, too.
But as it is, rejectionist candidates secure negligible numbers of votes, mostly cast by elderly adherents to a Protestant fundamentalism that is rapidly declining in influence. Rejectionists on the other side do even worse.
Within a day of each other, they recently staged 1980s throwback funerals for prominent figures in Stroke City. But that was what they were: 1980s throwbacks for the dead, one of whom was 86.
(Stroke City is a fascinating example of a city-state at the outer extremities. It is in Northern Ireland, but its Unionists no less than its Nationalists seem largely unaware of that fact. It can see into the Republic, but its Nationalists no less than its Unionists are wary of that, too. Visitors from both are welcome to its shops and to its hospitals. But they will always be just that: visitors.)
Corbyn's position on Northern Ireland has been that of the Conservative Party since 1993, 1985, 1973, take your pick. It has been that of the Ulster Unionist Party since 1998, and that of the Democratic Unionist Party since 2007.
There used to be a certain amount of Fleet Street opposition to it, by people in the same position as Irish-Americans who professed to oppose the "betrayal". But even that has almost entirely gone by the by. The writers on the right-wing papers follow the Tory line at least as often as they set it.
Look out for that when almost every single one of them gets behind whatever deal David Cameron brings home from the EU, and duly advocates a Yes vote in the referendum.
When that specific deal goes before a Special Congress of the TUC and a Special Conference of the Labour Party, then the result will be very different indeed, especially under the Leadership of Jeremy Corbyn.
But then, the money for the No Campaign is going to have to come from somewhere. With big business lined up on the Yes side, which speaks for itself, that leaves only the unions. As much as anything else, and very intentionally, the Government's attacks on trade union funding are pre-emptive attacks on the No Campaign.
In the meantime, if Argentina wanted the Falkland Islands, then she could have them. No one could stop her, and it is possible that no one would wish to, at least not enough to do anything about it; as much as anything else, the whole situation has always been among the many proofs that the deterrent value of British nuclear weapons was zero.
But Argentina is playing a much longer game, and that is about economic rivalry with another G20 country.
For some years now, whenever this question has come before international bodies, then certain countries with the Queen as Head of State have voted with Argentina. "Anti-colonialism" is the argument from the heart. But integration into the economic life of their own hemisphere is the argument from the head.
Corbyn, of unrivalled authority, needs to demand a referendum among the Chagos Islanders on the renewal or otherwise of a previous Labour Government's shameful 50-year lease of their homeland to the Americans, who have used it for torture and illegal abduction, in 1965.
A referendum on the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands must be held on the same day, Corbyn should insist. And vice versa: no referendum in the South Atlantic without a referendum in the Indian Ocean. How would his detractors respond to that?
While he was about it, he might also look into the situation on Ascension Island. He knows where I am.
Does the Queen support the IRA, then? She has them to stay overnight at her house.
ReplyDeleteThis point has been made by Peter Hitchens many times. It is, as he said, part of the British State's general surrender to lawlessness and terror that we now have unrepentant terrorists in Westminster and shaking hands with Prince Charles.
It's one of many symbols of national decline and international shame.
The point is that patriots like Hitchens regret this fact.
To people like Corbyn, it's a matter of pride.
The definition of patriotism is not "agreeing with Peter Hitchens". Not that you do, awfully much. He agrees with Corbyn far more than he does with you.
DeleteCorbyn was talking openly to the same organisations and individuals with whom the Thatcher Government was talking in secret, while lying to Parliament that it was not doing so.
Do you live in Northern Ireland? Nor do I. But almost no one who does, still agrees with your, or Hitchens's, view. It is not about you.
Your stuff on Hitchens' near total agreement with Corbyn is absolutely brilliant: http://primepolitics.org/2015/07/23/the-peter-hitchens-of-the-left/. Hitchens is in denial about where he belongs on the political spectrum. He has to define conservatism as whatever he says, even if it is bringing back British Coal and the Central Electricity Generating Board. "The Left" therefore has to be something else even if that is gay marriage, a Tory Party policy that won the Tories an overall majority and got most Tory members under 40 to join the party. That makes the Tories part of "the Left" according to Hitchens.
DeleteI always ask Greens whether they regret the defeat of the miners in 1985. It exposes their claim to be "Real Labour" or what have you.
DeleteBut Hitchens would and does give the Real Labour answer. He thinks that the wrong side won the Miners' Strike, and that the effects of that outcome ought to be reversed.
Then he wonders why the Kensington and Chelsea Conservative Association did not select him as its Prospective Parliamentary Candidate.
Labour leadership hopeful Jeremy Corbyn says South Wales coalfield could reopen: http://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/labour-leadership-hopeful-jeremy-corbyn-9815780
DeleteStraight out of The Abolition of Britain.
DeleteAlthough, by a curiosity that I have never quite worked out, there was a strong Eurocommunist influence in the South Wales NUM. And in Scotland.
The Kent coalfield, by contrast, remained under orthodox Communist direction, due to its close links with its own other half under the Channel and up again, and thus, via the CGT, to the French Communist Party, which was utterly pro-Soviet to the bitter end.