Iain Martin: Does Jeremy Corbyn hate Britain? – CapX
On subject after subject – relations with Russia, the IRA, the need to kill that scumbag Emwazi – Corbyn struggles to make even vaguely pro-British noises. The roots of this on the far left are deep. Its origins may lie in some democratic socialists in the 1920s identifying with the Russian Revolution and the sense in the 1930s that one had to choose one tyranny – socialism – in order to defeat another – national socialism or Nazism. This led some traitorous twits to betray their country as spies, but among a larger group that would never have gone that far it left a residual contempt for Britain. Everything the UK did could be seen through the prism of imperial decline, decadent fading grandeur, American aggression, capitalist oppression and the class system (even though some of those who hate Britain then and now went to leading schools and are appalling snobs.)
It must be maddening for the Corbynistas that the UK has actually recovered rather well from the traumas of the mid-20th century. It has shed an empire, while offering protection to the Falklands, in a remarkably well-ordered way compared to what happened when the empires of other nations collapsed. There are plenty of problems, in terms of social mobility and community breakdown, but the record in the last quarter of a century of tackling this in education (in England, and best of all in London) is outstanding.
Corbyn is too Far Left to be the leader of a major political party in an affluent European country. He comes from the part of the Far Left that turned the movement against European imperialism into an all encompassing ideology in the 1950s and 1960s with disastrous results for the Left and the newly freed countries. This is Fritz Fanon and Edward Said territory here. Its very good for making some intelligent insights but not really that much as a plank for a political party that needs to get things done. From what I’ve read Corbyn hasn’t really said anything about any real domestic issue effecting the United Kingdom. Its all about a non-interventionalist foreign policy. The equivalent would be if the Democratic nominee for President kept focusing on Vietnam and American intervention in Central and South America and the need to atone for foreign policy sins.Report
The article is right. After Ireland, India/Pakistan, and Israel/Palestine; the United Kingdom managed to the rest of decolonization with less problems and greater ease than other countries.Report
Any country that produced Ted Cruz is ipso facto a failed state.Report