Minor threat

Labour’s new leader threatens only the British establishment, but the Tories threaten much more important things than that, says Steve Beauchampé.

Should he get the go ahead from the United States, Prime Minister David Cameron will shortly attempt to secure House of Commons backing for British military intervention in Syria, having already failed once, back in 2013.

We can be certain that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn will oppose such a move, at which point Cameron and other senior Tories will claim that Corbyn is a threat to national security. It’s a phrase they have spun consistently in the month since Corbyn became leader and they will likely repeat it for as long as he remains so.

The claim stands no scrutiny of course, and is defamatory and an outrageous slur, but the Tories hope that if they say it often enough it will become accepted as fact. It is based on Corbyn’s opposition to renewing Trident, Britain’s independent nuclear deterrent, his questioning of our continued membership of NATO as that organisation is currently configured and confirmation that if he became Prime Minister he wouldn’t approve the use of nuclear weapons.

That Corbyn has entered into dialogue (for the purposes of conflict resolution) with paramilitary groups such as the IRA and Hamas (something that the British and Israeli governments respectively have done as well) is also used to justify the claim, one extended by Cameron at last week’s Conservative Party conference when he ranted that: “We cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.”

Corbyn is essentially a pacifist who believes that talking is preferable to fighting and that military engagement should be a last resort, used rarely and sparingly. To the likes of Cameron, to whom military intervention appears to be the first reaction to any conflict (he either supported or oversaw British military involvement in Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011) and Iraq again (2014), none of which could be deemed a success) pacifists are decidedly dangerous.

But recent history at least appears to be on Jeremy Corbyn’s side and he has for several months been calling for international talks involving all of the countries engaged in, or directly impacted by, the Syrian conflict. That a consensus around this position appears to be forming, led by Washington, suggests that the Prime Minister and his colleagues might do well to take Corbyn’s arguments on the matter seriously instead of belittling and insulting him.

The ‘Corbyn as threat’ claim is one of a slew of linguistic contortions the Conservatives are currently engaged in. They are central to Tory strategy, as important as any of their policies. Another is the claim that they are the ‘party of working people‘, preposterous given the government’s cutting of working tax credits, the forthcoming trade union legislation that plans to further restrict what are already arguably the most draconian labour laws in the western world, a readiness to surrender British employees’ rights as part of EU renegotiations, excluding under 21s from a raft of employment legislation, the rise of unpaid workplace internships, and the lack of employment protection legislation for the self-employed and amongst agency workers and those on zero hours contracts.

Perhaps then it is no surprise to learn that prior to becoming an MP Employment Secretary Pritti Patel was paid up to £167 per hour as a PR consultant by the tobacco industry to defend their paying wages of £5 per month to employees in Burma! A party for working people; more like a problem for working people!

Equally outlandish is the ‘One nation Conservatives’ mantra. ‘One percent of the nation Conservatives’ might be more accurate given the stratospheric increase in the gap between the super rich and the working poor since 2010, the wealth and quality of life gap only likely to increase as deeper public spending cuts and changes to the tax system designed to assist the already comfortably off take effect.

And if you happen to be amongst those being made redundant by the closure of Goodyear in Wolverhampton, SSI in Redcar or savage cuts to the police service, libraries, leisure centres and court system, or yet another shop or pub on your local High Street, then expect nothing but opprobrium from those large sections of society for whom sympathy will turn to Tory orchestrated anger the moment your first benefits claim is made.

Our skewed and deeply flawed electoral system may have given the Conservatives an overall majority on a mere 36% of votes cast, but it is a system and a result that masks how politically and economically divided Britain has become.

The notion of one nation Conservatism/Socialism/Liberalism is absurd; the ideological schisms are too raw, too pronounced. The Conservatives were rejected across large swathes of London, rejected in Birmingham, rejected in Manchester, in Liverpool, in Sheffield, in Nottingham, in Bradford, in Leeds, in the North East and obliterated in Scotland, with policies rooted in neo-liberalism and increasing international insularity (though dressed up with a rhetoric rooted in fantasy).

In such circumstances the Tories cannot legitimately claim to be governing for all any more than can Labour, who hold few seats across the south and in the shires.

At their party conference the Conservatives had nothing of worth to say about the housing crisis, nothing of any use to say about climate change and nothing at all to say about electoral reform or to young people. For them to accuse the man who baulks at obliterating millions of people and rendering vast swathes of land uninhabitable for centuries in the most violent man made act imaginable of being a threat to Britain’s security seems somewhat ironic.

Yet I would suggest that a government whose leader itches to engage in contentious military action over already crowded Syrian airspace, with its attendant dangers and dubious benefits, a government that says it wishes to remain in the EU but needs Jeremy Corbyn’s party to deliver the votes that it cannot command from amongst it’s own supporters, a government that increases the production of fossil fuels whilst rolling back state support for clean energy technology, is more of a threat; a threat to peace in the tinderbox that is the Middle East, a threat to our country’s economic well being and a threat to the planet that alone may yet dwarf all other threats.

2 thoughts on “Minor threat

  1. I was very much involved from its start in the same StopSelectedWars coalition as Jeremy C. I actively opposed the attacks on Saddam Hussein, Gaddaffi, and the Assad “regime”, none of whom had had any plans of aggressive warmongering (hardly something that can be said about the uk). Ditto the nato/westminster-sponsored coup against Yanukovic to destabilise Ukraine and start a war against an essential part of the Russian economic union. Such is the incompetence of our western “leaders” that both their war against Assad and their war against a Russia-friendly Ukraine have both failed pathetically.

    But Islamic State is very different. They DO have a mission to attack all the other countries. It’s written in their unchangeable manifesto otherwise known as a “holy” book. I quote.
    Quran 8:55 – Surely the vilest of animals in Allah’s sight are those who disbelieve (= the non-Muslims, most of the people in Britain for a start).
    Quran 48:29 – Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. Those who follow him are merciful to one another, but ruthless to unbelievers.
    Quran 8:12 – I will cast terror into the hearts of the non-Muslims. Therefore strike off their heads and strike off every fingertip of them.
    Quran 9:123 – O you who believe! Fight those of the non-Muslims who are near to you and let them find in you hardness.
    “Fight them until there is no dissension, and the religion is entirely Allah’s.” [8:39]
    “Fight the unbelievers till they pay the Jizya (tax on unbelievers) and are subdued.”[9:29]
    (This latter one is reflected in the ultimatum demands to the citizens of Mosul this year.)

    And I could quote a lot more of the same from that book. And no, it is not countered by the routinely-misquoted 5:32, which only applies to the Children of Israel (i.e. Jews):
    “On that account: We ordained FOR THE CHILDREN OF ISRAEL that if anyone killed a person – unless it be in retaliation for murder or for spreading mischief in the land – it would be as if he killed all mankind: and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved the life of all humanity.” [5:32]

    Now tell me please why people such as Sadiq Khan have to resort to such a grossly-misleading selective misquotation from their own holy book?

    • For the avoidance of doubt, I should have added that that same holy book is a supreme pile of claptrap….
      To be a genuine Muslim you have to believe some remarkably strange things. For instance that the earth is flat. The Qur’anic verses 15:19, 20:53, 43:10, 50:7, 51:48, 71:19, 78:6, 79:30, 88:20 and 91:6 all clearly state this, and none suggest it is spherical.

      And:
      “Do they not ponder on the Qur’an? Had it been from other than Allah, they would surely have found therein much discrepancy.” [4:82].
      “Every being that is in the heavens and on earth: all are devoutly obedient to Him.” [30:26] … but the Qur’an also makes hundreds of references to those who are not obedient [2:11-20, 3:10-12, etc etc] and the horrors that await them.
      Allah created the heavens and the earth in six days [7:54, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59], but Allah also created the heavens and the earth in eight days [41:9-12].
      Allah created man from a blood clot [96:1-2], from water [25:54], from clay [15:26], from dust [30:20], from nothing [3:47].
      And etc…..

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