Corbyn isn’t just targeted for criticism

The Ministry of Defence called it “unacceptable”. Labour said it was “alarming”. A Tory MP called it “disgraceful”. Social media called it “fascist”. I call it a possible taste of things to come.

Such were responses to a video that shows four British paratroopers in Afghanistan using a picture of Corbyn for pistol practice. The clip testifies to the fine standards of marksmanship in the Parachute Regiment, with several rounds hitting Jeremy’s visage smack in the bull’s-eye.

Had it been a live Jeremy, rather than his pictorial representation, he’d be in no position to destroy the country those Paras are ready to die for. But it wasn’t; so he is.

I wouldn’t read too much into this incident, and those indignant chaps should lighten up. When they aren’t in action, the Paras’ existence is dreary, the nightlife in Kabul is understated, and this could have been just their way to get some comic relief.

However, assuming that every joke is at least tangentially based on reality, one could perhaps infer that the soldiers are less than enthusiastic about the prospect of Jeremy doing to Britain what his idol Maduro is doing to Venezuela.

Their chosen mode of political self-expression may be seen as controversial in some quarters, but I for one find it hard to take issue with the underlying sentiment.

Rory Stewart, Conservative minister for prisons, disagrees: “They should not be political – they are there to defend the country and the Queen.” This statement reinforces my heartfelt belief that MPs should take an IQ test before standing for election.

It takes a moron not to spot such a glaring oxymoron in his own statement. Mr Stewart seems to think that defending the country and the Queen has nothing to do with politics.

One struggles to think of anything else it has to do with. Sport? Entertainment? Travel? Or does he believe those men should kill and die as unthinking automata who’ll draw a bead on anyone they’re told to shoot without even understanding why?

Still, the men risking their lives in that godforsaken place must be grateful to Mr Stewart for clarifying their role in life. On second thoughts, they’re probably aware of it already.

And I’m sure they’d describe it in those very terms: defending the country and the Queen. But against what and whom?

It’s a logical solecism to believe that those who present a threat to Queen and country can only ever be found in faraway places like Afghanistan. Some evildoers wishing to destroy Her Majesty’s realm may well be native-born.

Anyone who is even cursorily familiar with Corbyn’s plans for Britain and also with the people he regards as friends will be aware of the cataclysmic havoc his Trotskyist government will wreak.

From Marx and Trotsky to the IRA, Hamas, Hezbollah, Chavez and Maduro, Corbyn has never met an evil energumen he couldn’t love – and emulate. Even before his electoral victory, he’s already talking the language of Mao’s Red Guard, vowing to “re-educate” Treasury officials in Marxist economics.

This intention doesn’t come from a touching concern for those mandarins’ general erudition. They’ll need to learn Marxist economics because it’ll be the guide to Britain’s economy under Corbyn.

His views on immigration are brutally simple: no limit whatsoever. One can understand that because Marxism is impossible to practise without a steady supply of slave labour, and training the indigenous population to act in that capacity may take a while.

Those soldiers sense that whoever it is they’re fighting in Afghanistan can at worst only wound Britain with the odd pinprick. Corbyn, on the other hand, presents a deadly threat to the country and the Queen. They understand it – too bad some ministers of the Crown don’t.

Yesterday Theresa May effectively handed 10 Downing Street keys to Corbyn by making him responsible for Brexit, or rather for killing it stone dead. Suddenly that evil apparition acquired an aura of statesmanlike respectability, something that the Tory party demonstrably lacks.

Those sharpshooting Paras know it, and one can forgive their gesture of frustration and helplessness. They can only vent those emotions by shooting at a picture, not the real thing.

The choir of indignant din brings back the memories of Stalin’s Russia, when loo paper didn’t exist, at least not for hoi-polloi. People had to make do with torn newspaper sheets, but they had to be careful.

Using for lavatorial purposes a page featuring Stalin’s photo was treated as tantamount to an assassination attempt – and dealt with accordingly. But we aren’t in Stalin’s Russia now, and abusing Corbyn’s picture is nothing other than a puerile prank.

But one that raises a serious question. If we agree that democracy isn’t a suicide pact, what recourse do we have to prevent the democratic ascent to government of a Hitler, a Stalin or, for that matter, a Corbyn?

Assassination (of a man, that is, not a piece of paper) isn’t a solution that can be seriously recommended for both moral and practical reasons. The moral reasons are self-explanatory, while the practical ones are almost so.

Corbyn doesn’t personify his ‘philosophy’ as comprehensively as, say, Hitler embodied his. Putting a bullet through Hitler’s head in 1936 could have conceivably prevented a tragedy; shooting Corbyn would have no such prophylactic effect.

But, if the government can no longer govern in ways that protect the country and the Queen, can a case be made for the army to step in? Desperate times calling for desperate measures and all that?

I can’t answer that question – and wouldn’t even if I could. Let’s just say that, by the looks of it, some British soldiers seem to differ from some British ministers in their understanding of what it takes to defend the country and the Queen.