Friends and Foes

The most hilarious reactions to Jeremy Corbyn's Channel 4 News interview from people who think that they are somehow his target audience when they could not possibly be less so.

No one seems to have told them that we are in fact fighting a war on the same side as Hezbollah, right now. Never mind that Corbyn voted against it.

His critics have in recent years discovered the ancient indigenous Christians of the Middle East, although they rarely, if ever, know anything about them. The ones in Lebanon, very much their heartland, pray openly for "the brothers in the South".

Meaning their last line of defence as they see it, Hezbollah, which sits in coalition with several Christian parties under a President who has to be a Maronite (look it up, Jez-baiters, since you doubtless have to) and a Prime Minister who has to be a Sunni.

The Corbyn-haters have still not got over Parliament's effrontery in denying them their war to remove Assad, who is universally recognised by Syrian Christians and other minorities as their protector, and to install instead that which has become IS, itself entirely a product of the Iraq War in support of which they howled hysterically.

Corbyn voted against war for IS, he voted a year later against war against IS, and he was one of very few MPs to oppose the intervention in Libya whereby David Cameron directly created the current situation in Tunisia.

I state these facts as no more than that. Facts.

Antisemitism ceased to be a meaningful charge in British politics when the supporters of the Iraq War screamed it every day for years at those of us who dared to be right. Not that they have learned their lesson. One day, they will be the boy who cried wolf.

Corbyn is not an antisemite. Nor is he a Malthusian eugenicist. Are Mike Kane, Gavin Shuker and Stephen Timms proud of having nominated Liz Kendall? Will they still be voting for her? If so, then why?

Those advocating the skilful use of preferential voting between Andy Burnham and Yvette Cooper against Corbyn, do you also advocate it against Kendall? If not, why not?