Tuesday 13 December 2016

Wise Men Follow The Star

There is much castigation of the Morning Star for its coverage of Aleppo.

But it is unique among national newspapers in having opposed every British military intervention of the last 20 years.

The best that can be said of the war in Sierra Leone is that it failed to deliver any improvement.

All of the others have been catastrophic.

I say again that the Morning Star is the only national newspaper to have opposed each and every one of them.

A small number of MPs is also in that venerable category.

Of those, by far the most prominent today is Jeremy Corbyn.

He even voted against the war in Libya, and how about that for civilian casualties?

Only a handful of Labour MPs did that. But precisely one Conservative did so. One.

Possibly more than anything else, the British Right now defines itself by reference to its having supported the wars of Clinton and Bush, Blair and Cameron.

Russia and Iran can do no good in its eyes. Israel and the Gulf tyrannies, supremely Saudi Arabia, can do no evil.

America was in the latter category, and it looks as if the next President might keep it there after all.

The British Right is first and foremost the War Party, and it is very proud to be so, despite having been proved horrifically wrong over, and over, and over again.

Against, which is the key point, Seumas Milne and Andrew Murray, Lindsey German and John Rees, Tariq Ali and John Pilger.

Against Diane Abbott and John McDonnell, George Galloway and Ken Livingstone.

Against Ken Loach and two million people, including the young Richard Burgon, on the streets of London in 2003.

Against Dennis Skinner and Ronnie Campbell, the ghost of Tony Benn and the ghost of Michael Foot.

Against the vulgar and presumptuous interference of organised labour in political affairs.

Against the vulgar and presumptuous existence of organised labour at all, for it is not a coincidence that the hated rail unions are all stalwarts of the anti-war movement.

Against Jeremy Corbyn and the Morning Star.

2 comments:

  1. Been reading your contributions to Guido on this. His right-wing readers don't think much of his hostility to the Morning Star on Syria. They seem to agree with you that it and Corbyn have been right all along about the wars and deserve to be listened to. As you point out, "the level of public opposition to the Iraq War was only possible if it included the majority of Tory voters. But you are now rare in the media, and almost unheard of in politics. It was not ever thus, but here we are."

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  2. You'd never believe most of those wars were waged by a nominally Labour government. Almost all of the Tories voted for all of them and they are now led by someone who did, but Labour is led by one of the handful of MPs who voted against the lot. Almost all of those MPs are Labour.

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