On the eve of the election, the Tory attack dogs in the tabloids (the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Express) have unleashed their most vicious smear campaign against Jeremy Corbyn yet. This reeks of utter desperation from a Tory election campaign that has been woeful and lamentable. According to the Tory leaning Spectator, it has been the worst Tory election campaign ever.
The Tories have been so inept and incompetent that they can’t even run a smear campaign against Corbyn properly. On the one hand, they call him weak on security for being a pacifist, because unlike May, he will not readily press the nuclear button killing hundreds of thousands of civilians in one go. And on the other hand, they say that he is a terrorist sympathiser. How can he be a pacifist who renounces violence and a terrorist sympathiser who promotes violence at the same time? The Tories are so desperate that they are not even making any sense.
The facts are as follows. Corbyn spent his entire political career promoting peace and bringing an end to violence around the world. He voted against the Iraq war, UK’s intervention in Libya and bombing in Syria. Theresa May voted for all three. Corbyn has been proven to be on the right of history as these interventions in the Middle East have raised the terror threat both in the UK and abroad. The ex-MI5 boss, Baroness Manningham-Buller, for example, had said that the Iraq invasion substantially increased the terrorist threat to the UK.
A vote for Corbyn is a vote for peace and an end to foreign wars. A vote for May will be a threat to our safety and security at home and abroad.
At home, May cut police numbers and she was warned by the Police Federation that it will increase risks of terrorism at home. We saw in the wake of the Manchester terrorist attack that 1000 armed soldiers had to be deployed on our streets because of the police cuts. This was a failure of May when she was a home secretary. David Cameron’s former strategy chief put the blame for the recent terrorist attacks on May as he tweeted, “Theresa May responsible for security failures of London Bridge, Manchester, Westminster Bridge. Should be resigning not seeking re-election”.
Abroad, Theresa May is building a coalition of risk with Donald Trump. Like him, she sold weapons to Saudi Arabia which has been used to bomb Yemen. We saw after Trump was elected, May wasted no time to go over to the White House and hold Trump’s hand giving him her unconditional support. Trump has a dangerous and aggressive approach to foreign policy. He was on the brink of starting World War III with North Korea within months of being elected.
And earlier on in this election campaign, Boris Johnson indicated that May will support Donald Trump in a bombing campaign in the Middle East without parliamentary approval. In April, Trump dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb on Afghanistan known as the mother of all bombs. Trump’s belligerent approach to foreign policy is making the world less safe every day. May is making a coalition of risk with him. Only a Labour government led by Corbyn provides any prospect of ending the endless cycle of foreign wars and terrorism.
I have made a YouTube video on this topic.
Cllr Khaled Moyeed 