Mr – or, to use the honorific he doubtless prefers – Comrade Corbyn has snubbed the Queen’s invitation to attend the state dinner in honour of President Trump.
Perhaps it’s worth pointing out to Corbyn that a state occasion at Buckingham Palace is different from dinner at a friend’s house. Thus in my private capacity (which is the only capacity in which I can act), I’ve been known to decline dinner invitations if I didn’t like the company.
For example, I’d probably not attend a dinner where another guest would be Corbyn, whom I find sufficiently revolting to put me off my food. However, in the unlikely, nay impossible, event that such an invitation was issued by Her Majesty, I’d feel duty-bound to attend – whatever the guest list.
Being rude to one’s friends is par for the course: that’s what friends are for, though not all they are for. However, being rude to the Queen means disrespecting her realm, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
Such rudeness goes beyond bad manners even if manifested by an ordinary subject. But when the Queen’s invitation is thrown in her face by a high official, it shows instantly and undeniably that such a person isn’t fit to be a high official.
Admittedly, Mr Trump isn’t the kind of man I’d welcome at my own dinner table. We’re all God’s children and all that but, if a particular God’s child is a narcissistic, functionally illiterate vulgarian, I, my wife and our other likely guests wouldn’t enjoy his company, and neither would he enjoy ours.
But this is neither here nor there. For when Trump is on a state visit to Britain, it doesn’t matter how narcissistic, illiterate or vulgar he is. What matters is that he is the head of state in a country friendly to ours, and allied with it for some 200 years.
In any case, since Corbyn is every bit as narcissistic, illiterate and vulgar as Trump, this can’t be the reason for his boorishness. And I do hope he didn’t turn down the Queen’s invitation because he didn’t expect to have a good time.
Apparently, the last time he attended such an event he described it as “one of the most boring nights I have ever had”. That may well be, but state occasions aren’t attended for their entertainment value. They are among those things that come with the territory for leaders of Her Majesty’s Loyal (in Corbyn’s case glaringly disloyal) Opposition. You do it not because you want to, but because you have to.
Perhaps, rather than trying to second-guess Corbyn’s reasons, we should listen to the man himself. So here are his own words: “Theresa May should not be rolling out the red carpet for a state visit to honour a president who rips up vital international treaties, backs climate change denial and uses racist and misogynist rhetoric.”
Now “racist and misogynist rhetoric” doesn’t belong here at all, for if Trump ever indulges in such affronts to Corbyn’s sensibilities, he does so in private. I’m not aware of a single racist or misogynist word Trump has uttered ex cathedra in his capacity of US president – and it’s in that capacity that he’s visiting Britain.
As to ripping up “vital international treaties”, which ones would they be? The only treaties Trump has ripped up are one that was guaranteed to turn Iran into a nuclear power, with deadly consequences for America’s and Britain’s allies; and also the Luddite Paris Accords, penalising the West for the environmental damage largely perpetrated by the Third World.
This dovetails neatly with “climate change denial”, which is among the most serious crimes against New Age pieties. Corbyn is obviously unhappy that Trump refuses to let his knee jerk whenever yet another fad makes a claim, especially if both the fad and the claim are bogus and anti-Western.
All this means is that Trump’s politics differ from Corbyn’s, as if we didn’t know that already. Hence Corbyn refuses to break bread with a leader whose political convictions clash with his own.
Splendid, glad we’ve established that. But logically the opposite must also be true: Corbyn has to see nothing wrong with the politics of those leaders with whom he has happily sat down to dinner.
Hence a quick scan of such kindred souls will provide an optically perfect insight into the convictions, and personality, of our likely next PM. So here goes, in no particular order:
Corbyn has attended a state dinner with Xi Jinping, president of a communist country running what effectively is a slave economy, suppressing free speech and murdering or imprisoning dissidents.
Comrade Jeremy has described as his friends members of Hamas and Hezbollah, murderous terrorist organisations that mysteriously fail to activate Corbyn’s revulsion at racism and misogyny. As he put it: “It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking.”
Clearly, he doesn’t regard as racist a heartfelt commitment to murdering Jews, accompanied by regrets that Hitler didn’t quite finish the job – even though the Holocaust never happened, and if it did, it was the Jews’ own fault. As to the Muslims’ treatment of women, if that’s not misogyny, I don’t know what is.
Incidentally, Trump is perhaps the best friend Israel has ever had among US presidents, which alone would suffice to make Corbyn detest him – hatred of Israel, ideally as an expression of virulent anti-Semitism, seems to be an ironclad criterion for membership in his Labour party.
Who else? Oh yes, Comrade Jeremy never had any compunction against sharing a meal with IRA murderers, including Gerry Adams himself. In fact, he timed such friendly get-togethers to coincide with IRA atrocities.
He met Adams in the 1980s, when the IRA was waging a war of terror against Britain. A fortnight after the IRA blew up the Tory conference, killing five people, Corbyn had tea at Westminster with two convicted murderers. And he did the same in 1996, the year of the bombings in Manchester and the Docklands.
Corbyn also went to Syria to meet Assad, with his trip funded by the Palestinian lobbyists who also organised an event at which Jews were blamed for the Holocaust. I wonder if afterwards Jeremy described Assad as a gas.
And of course he’s a self-proclaimed friend and admirer of Maduro, a communist who is equally good at bankrupting a previously rich Venezuela and driving armoured cars over those who object.
Clarity is beginning to emerge. Corbyn’s criteria for selecting his dinner companions include a propensity for mass murder, anti-Semitism, hatred of Britain and her allies, communist ideology and general criminality.
President Trump should be proud he doesn’t qualify.