Not A Priti Sight

Whatever one may think of Britain's relationship with China, no one needs any lectures from Priti Patel, whom Theresa May had to sack as International Development Secretary because Patel had attempted to divert overseas aid money to a Golan Heights field hospital that Israel had given to the so-called Islamic State. Only today, Patel was falsely claiming that those marching for Gaza had been burning copies of the Torah. Of course, there was no pushback from Laura Kuenssberg.

In Gaza, Hamas eliminated al-Qaeda's Jahafil Al-Tawhid Wal-Jihad fi Filastin, Hamas executed the IS-affiliated Sheikh Omar Hadid Brigade, and Saleh Al-Jafarawi has just been killed by the Doghmush clan; that organised crime family has numerous al-Qaeda and IS connections, and it collaborated with Israel to steal what little aid managed to make it into Gaza. Hezbollah has been fighting against both IS and al-Qaeda for as long as each has existed. But when Shamima Begum went to join IS in Syria, then she went to join the side that the Conservative-led Government of the day was supporting even while bombing it in Iraq.

All parties rejoice that Syria is now controlled by a man who was lately the second-in-command both of al-Qaeda and of IS. He never mentions Palestine. That omission is very nearly unheard of in Arab leaders. They almost always do nothing for the Palestinians. They often treat them abominably. But they shoehorn in their supposed concern as a matter of ritual obligation. Yet not this one. Israel and IS have never attacked each other, and it is not as if fanatics respond to deterrence.

Those fanatics have declared their commitment to "a free market system based on competition" and "integrated into the global economy". The Assad regime gave up on Socialism in any practical sense a long time ago, but it never went so far as to align itself, as its successor has done, with the Constitution of the British Labour Party. Hence, no doubt, the absurd so-called elections that the new regime has held using a system that recalled Morgan McSweeney.

Compare both main parties' clear and undisputed ties to that cesspit, with the campaign of lies against Jeremy Corbyn. That he and Diane Abbott took a motorbike tour of East Germany in 1976 still comes up today as if it proved anything. The complete fiction that he had been a Czechoslovak spy received saturation coverage for weeks. But it was Tony Blair who went to the opera with Vladimir Putin, at the same time as Blair was cultivating Bashar al-Assad, also to the disgust of the Left.

Of people who are still active in British electoral politics, the longest anti-Putin record is Corbyn's. He was the main sponsor of an Early Day Motion against Putin's warmongering as long ago as 9 December 1999, he sponsored an EDM calling for the freezing of Russian assets on 13 December 2010, he scandalised his Blairite backbenchers in 2018 by calling from the Despatch Box for action against Russian money in British politics, and much more besides. In the present House of Commons, Corbyn is best placed to raise Nathan Gill, and that in the context of Nigel Farage's tardiness in registering his outside earnings, and of the opaqueness of his constituency housing arrangements.

And then there is Boris Johnson. There is always, always, always bloody Boris Johnson. He made Patel the Home Secretary under whom net immigration reached its highest ever level. Rather more significantly, he went to war in Ukraine on grounds that make Blair's in Iraq look almost principled. Yet across parties, these people have the gall to accuse the Left of being unpatriotic. We now have the chance to put a stop to that once and for all. We should take it with relish.