Stop And Think

Walkouts, removal of television channels that "no one watches", sporting boycotts, cultural boycotts, bans on the works of long dead novelists and composers: there was none of this, or anything else, in response to the equally illegal, immoral and inevitably counterproductive invasion of Iraq. But Iraqis do not "look like us". Nor do Afghans, or Libyans, or Yemenis, or Somalis, or Palestinians.

Addressed by Jeremy Corbyn and others, tonight's Stop the War rally was in support of the anti-war protests in Russia, the participants in which also accept the blindingly obvious fact that the root of the problem is the NATO expansion that Russia was promised would never happen, and against which even George Kennan and Henry Kissinger warned in the strongest possible terms.

Like the Stop the War Coalition in the first line of the statement to which Corbyn remains a signatory, they oppose Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine. As long ago as 2000, Corbyn was protesting against the war in Chechnya while Tony Blair was accompanying Putin to the opera and claiming to have "seen into his soul". By the next General Election, Corbyn will have been proved right again.