A Sun journalist opined on today’s Sky News that the real question about Jeremy Corbyn is whether or not he’s a leader.
This obsession with leadership is a relatively recent phenomenon, as if a strong leader is ipso facto a good thing, regardless of where he’s likely to lead the country. Messrs Stalin and Hitler, both unquestionably strong leaders, would no doubt agree.
A more interesting question about Corbyn is whether or not he’s a front man for a hard-Left conspiracy to take over Britain.
Now reasonable people are rightly wary of believers in conspiracy theories. Such beliefs usually come packaged with pet hatreds, psychiatric disorders or at best touchingly naïve credulity.
However, if we stop talking about theories and instead focus on practices, it becomes clear that some large-scale conspiracies have indeed shaped the modern world.
The Bolshevik party, for one, was conspiratorial, as any reader of Lenin’s canon will confirm. The two-phase conspiracy aimed at taking over Russia and then using it as a springboard for world conquest, and neither Lenin nor his henchmen were bashful about stating these goals in so many words.
The first phase worked to perfection, in the second the Bolsheviks achieved control of merely half the world. Some may see that as a success, some as failure, but nobody can deny that Bolshevism was a global conspiracy at work.
“Britain,” says Corbyn, “has a lot to learn from Marxism.” Well, she has even more to learn from Leninism, the better to counter Leninist tactics of seizing power.
Lenin advocated a two-prong strategy: combining violent revolutionary subversion with ‘legalism’, that is using loopholes in Western constitutions to overturn them.
He despised inflexible ‘Left-wing communism’, which he called an ‘infantile disorder’. Grown-ups were supposed to use Western parliaments to destroy Western parliamentarism and only resort to violence if that hadn’t worked.
This has always been the tactic of the British hard Left, and it almost succeeded during Harold Wilson’s tenure. That attempt, led by the Militant group, mercifully failed. But the group itself remained lurking in the background, waiting for its hour to come.
Suddenly it has sprung to life, which is evident from this statement: “The Socialist Party (formerly the Militant Tendency) wishes Jeremy Corbyn well in the Labour leadership election. If he is victorious it would be a real step forward and, in effect, the formation of a new party.”
No doubt. And if you wonder what kind of party it’ll be, just look at Corbyn’s key policies and sympathies:
- Getting rid of the royal family, turning Britain into a republic
- Scrapping nuclear weapons and leaving Nato, both unilaterally
- Nationalising railways, energy companies and banks
- Cutting less and taxing more (up to a 75% tax rate for the ‘rich’)
- Encouraging mass immigration: “The whole narrative on immigration… fails to recognise the huge contribution migrants have made to this country… we should let people into this country who are desperate to get somewhere safe to live” – with no suggestion of any limit on the number of such safety seekers
- Alliance with Hamas and Hezbollah, which it was Corbyn’s “honour and pleasure” to host in Parliament
As a sideline, it’s also Corbyn’s “honour and pleasure” to rub shoulders with virulent anti-Semites, such as Raed Salah, whom Corbyn described as “a very honoured citizen”. This honoured citizen has been imprisoned in Israel for inciting anti-Jewish racism and later found by a British judge to support the ‘blood libel’ canard.
Corbyn also defended the vicar Stephen Sizer, disciplined by the Church for anti-Semitism; presented a programme on the Iranian propaganda channel Post TV; allegedly donated money to Paul Eisen whose rabid anti-Semitism led to his being shunned even by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign.
None of this prevents Corbyn’s fellow MPs from praising him for his sincerity and unbending devotion to his beliefs. Well, Lenin was equally sincere about his plans, and neither did Hitler show any duplicity in promising to kill all Jews.
The methods used by the hard Left to support their man smack of Bolshevik ‘legalism’ more than of British parliamentarism. Hundreds of thousands of extremists are enlisting to vote in the leadership contest, even though they have never supported the Labour party before – 409,000 have rushed in since May. This proceeds against the background of massive cyber attacks on Corbyn’s opponents.
As a result, Comrade Corbyn seems certain to win a first-round landslide, which his reddish-brownish supporters will doubtless see as Phase 1. Phase 2 will be moving him to Downing Street – and make no mistake about it: this outcome is far from impossible.
Even if our phoney prosperity hasn’t run out of steam by 2020, there’s much the hard Left will be able to do to paralyse the country just in time for the next election. A general strike would do nicely, accompanied by the kind of disruption a small taste of which we’re getting on either side of the Channel Tunnel.
“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing,” said Edmund Burke. Jeremy Corbyn is a harbinger of such a triumph, which good men must realise – and do something about it.