Atlantic Sentinel

Tag: Jeremy Corbyn

  • How Alike Are Corbyn and Sanders?

    Britain’s Labour Party suffered its worst electoral defeat since 1935 in December, because it chose to be led by a far-left extremist.

    Center-left Democrats in the United States worry their party is about to make the same mistake. Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist from Vermont, won the most votes in the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary and now places first in national polls. (Although he has yet to get more than 26 percent support.)

    James Carville, the architect of Bill Clinton’s 1992 election victory, warned Democrats this week: “if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days.”

    Andrew Sullivan, a British-born conservative commentator, believes a Republican campaign against Sanders would be brutal:

    He’s a man … who sided with a Marxist-Leninist party that supported Ayatollah Khomeini during the hostage crisis in 1979. He loved the monstrous dictator Fidel Castro and took his 1988 honeymoon in the Soviet Union, no less, where he openly and publicly criticized his own country and praised many aspects of the Soviet system.

    On the other hand, Sullivan points out Corbyn had a net favorability rating of -40. Sanders is only at -3. Most polls show him beating Donald Trump with between 2 and 8 points.

    Corbyn and Sanders are not the same — but they are not completely dissimilar either. There are differences in policy, but worrying similarities in strategy. (more…)

  • Corbyn’s Extremism Is Why Labour Will Lose Again

    Jeremy Corbyn
    British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends a meeting in Highbury, North London, January 8, 2018 (Catholic Church England and Wales)

    Few British voters outside the Conservative Party trust Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a one-time liberal who opportunistically embraced the reactionary cause of Brexit to advance his own political career and who shamefully besmirched Parliament to get his preferred version of Brexit through.

    And still he is projected to win the election in December with support for the Conservatives trending toward 45 percent. Labour, the second largest party, is at 25-30 percent in the polls.

    The reason is Jeremy Corbyn. He has pulled Labour so far to the left that middle-income voters no longer trust it.

    Corbyn’s net approval rating is the lowest of any opposition leader since counting began in 1977. Just 16 percent of British voters have faith in him. (more…)

  • Corbyn Could Learn Something About Coalition Politics from Spain

    Frans Timmermans Nicola Zingaretti Pedro Sánchez
    Dutch, Italian and Spanish socialist party leaders Frans Timmermans, Nicola Zingaretti and Pedro Sánchez meet in Brussels, March 21 (PES)

    British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has ruled out forming a coalition after the election in December, daring smaller parties to back him or risk another Conservative government.

    “We’re not doing deals with anybody,” Corbyn told the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday.

    Asked specifically about the Scottish National Party’s (SNP) demand for an independence referendum, Corbyn said:

    The SNP will have a choice: do they want to put Boris Johnson back in with all the austerity economics that they claim to be against or are they going to say, well, a Labour government is going to deliver for Scotland.

    This is the same mistake Spanish Socialist Party leader Pedro Sánchez made after the election in April and the reason we had another election here in Spain last week. (more…)

  • Leftists Denounce “Coup” Against Vote-Rigging Autocrat in Bolivia

    Let’s take a break from the right-wing apologists of a would-be autocrat in the United States to check in with the left-wing apologists of an actual autocrat in Bolivia.

    In the face of mass protests, the Bolivarian military has forced the left-wing populist Evo Morales to step down.

    Morales served an unconstitutional third term as president from 2014 to 2019. He called and lost a referendum in 2016 on whether he should stand for a fourth term, but the Supreme Court canceled that result, arguing that “American imperialism” had influenced the outcome.

    In his latest bid for reelection, observers from the Organization of American States found clear manipulations, including a 24-hour freeze in the vote count, before which Morales was losing and after which he suddenly won.

    You wouldn’t know it from reading British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders or New York congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a leading light of the American new left, who have all denounced Morales’ removal as a “coup” and are calling for “free and fair elections” — no matter that’s the very thing Morales wouldn’t allow. (more…)

  • Corbyn Has Completely Failed as Opposition Leader

    Jeremy Corbyn
    British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn attends a meeting in Highbury, North London, January 8, 2018 (Catholic Church England and Wales)

    Boris Johnson had his worst day in the House of Commons yet on Wednesday. Britain’s Supreme Court had just ruled his suspension of Parliament illegal, in effect accusing the prime minister of lying to the country and the queen. He was taking questions on everything from his shambolic Brexit strategy to his shameful rhetoric, using words like “surrender” and “betrayal” to describe the policy of his opponents.

    If there was ever a moment for Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn to rise to the occasion.

    Instead, he reliably underwhelmed. In the same breath as he accused Johnson of steering the United Kingdom toward a disastrous no-deal exit from the EU, he blamed the ruling Conservatives for not bailing out tour operator Thomas Cook. Apparently under his government, no business would be allowed to fail. (more…)

  • Jeremy Corbyn Is Not the British Bernie Sanders

    American leftists who are tempted to sympathize with the British Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn — don’t. He is not an overseas version of Bernie Sanders.

    Both men were political outsiders for much of their careers until they unexpectedly rose to the tops of their respective parties. Both appeal to voters who are disillusioned with old politics. Both argue for a break with the neoliberal-tainted “Third Way” in social democracy.

    But that is where the similarities end. (more…)

  • Good, Bad and Ugly in Trump’s Drug Plan, Corbyn Parrots Russian Talking Points

    Politico reports that Donald Trump is eying common-sense drug reforms — as well as the death penalty for drug dealers.

    Here is the good, bad and ugly in the president’s plan to fight America’s opioid epidemic.

    The good:

    • Making it easier for drug addicts to get treatment under Medicaid.
    • Raising standards for painkillers that are reimbursed by federal programs.
    • Expanding the availability of naloxone, a life-saving anti-overdose drug.
    • Screening inmates for opioid use on their arrival in prison.

    The bad:

    • Making it easier for prosecutors to invoke mandatory minimum sentences for drug traffickers.

    The ugly:

    • Introducing the death penalty for dealers who sell lethal drugs.

    Tough-on-drugs policies like these have only made America’s opioid crisis worse.

    There is little evidence criminals are deterred by high minimum sentences.

    If anything, they may have encouraged the spread of fentanyl, a drug that is highly potent in small doses. Under current law, it can be sold without triggering mandatory minimums. (more…)

  • Brexiteers Disparage Good Friday Agreement, Berlusconi Hints at Tajani Premiership

    Politico reports that Brexiteers have launched a broadside against the Good Friday Agreement that has kept the peace in Northern Ireland for twenty years.

    Former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson and Labour “leaver” Kate Hoey believe the 1998 deal has “outlived its use.” Daniel Hannan, a Conservative member of the European Parliament, argues it has “failed”. Jacob Rees-Mogg, a prominent Conservative backbencher, disputes that Brexit puts the peace at risk.

    The timing is awkward. Northern Ireland has been without a devolved government for thirteen months. Although Brexit isn’t the main issue separating pro-British unionists and pro-Irish nationalists, it does factor into the parties’ calculations given that the pro-Brexit Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) props up Theresa May’s government in Westminster.

    The problem is that the Conservatives have committed to both take the United Kingdom out of the EU customs union and single market and protect the Good Friday Agreement and all-island economy. Those goals are incompatible so long as Ireland remains in the EU.

    A solution would be for Britain to remain in the single market, like Norway, or in the customs union, like Turkey, but that is unacceptable to Brexiteers. (more…)

  • Corbyn’s Spy Career, Catalan Language War

    The Sun reports that, as a freshman parliamentarian, Jeremy Corbyn was targeted for recruitment by the Czech secret police in 1986 and met at least three times with an intelligence officer posing as a diplomat.

    Corbyn says he never knowingly consorted with an East Bloc agent, but John Schindler, an intelligence expert, points out that only one year before the Labour politician was approached, Britain had expelled 25 Soviet “diplomats” who were really KGB officers “and the high-profile case got nonstop coverage in the British media.”

    For Corbyn not to have considered the possibility he might be meeting with a spy would have been incredibly naive.

    Moreover, Czech human rights abuses under communism were well-known even at the time. What was Corbyn thinking?

    Corbyn, I’m sure, will argue it’s important to hear both sides. That’s what he said when he was asked to defend inviting Hamas and Hezbollah representatives to London in 2009. Except he never invited or met with Israeli representatives, just as he didn’t seek meetings with American officials during the Cold War.

    Corbyn has a long history of instinctively siding with enemies of his country and the West, from Irish republican terrorists to Fidel Castro to Hugo Chávez to Muammar Gaddafi. Michael J. Totten wrote a good overview in The Atlantic last year. That’s what makes the Czech spy story, despite coming from the notoriously sensationalist The Sun, so believable. (more…)

  • European Fellow Travelers Refuse to Criticize Venezuelan Dictator

    Seventeen Latin American nations, including those run by leftists, agree Venezuela is now a “dictatorship” under Nicolás Maduro.

    For most of his presidency, Maduro has ruled by decree. When the opposition won a majority of the seats in parliament, he replaced it with a Constituent Assembly full of cronies. Critical lawmakers have been arrested. A “truth commission” is being established to investigate thoughtcrimes. Instead of seeing high crime and low growth rates as evidence of the failure of Venezuela’s socialist experiment, the crude and homophobic Maduro entertains anti-American and anticapitalist conspiracy theories.

    Yet left-wing admirers of Hugo Chávez will not see his heirs for the thugs they have become. (more…)

  • What Britain’s General Election Result Means

    Whitehall London England
    View of the Houses of Parliament from Whitehall in London, England (Shutterstock/Alan Copson)

    Britain’s ruling Conservatives are projected to lose control of Parliament. The exit poll for Thursday’s election shows them falling from 330 to 314 seats. Twelve more are needed for a majority.

    Assuming the exit poll isn’t too far off, what does this mean for Britain’s next government, its major political parties and the process of divorcing the United Kingdom from the EU? (more…)

  • Conservatives Lose Majority in British Election

    • Britain’s ruling Conservatives have lost their majority in parliamentary elections, but they remain the largest party with 317 out of 650 seats.
    • They can probably stay in power with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party of Northern Ireland, which has ten seats.
    • Labour won 40 percent support nationwide and 261 seats, up 29.
    • The Scottish National Party has gone down from 56 to 35 seats. A second independence referendum is now unlikely.
    • The centrist Liberal Democrats gained four seats and now have twelve. (more…)

  • Reasons to Doubt Labour’s Poll Surge Will Last

    Britain’s Labour Party has narrowed the gap with the ruling Conservatives in the polls, going up from an average of 25 percent support when Prime Minister Theresa May called an election last month to nearly 35 percent.

    Support for May’s Conservatives hasn’t come down from 45 percent. They are still expected to prevail, but with a smaller majority than seemed likely a few weeks ago.

    Labour’s surge has come at the expense of the Greens and Liberal Democrats, who are both polling in the single digits. (more…)

  • British Parties Seek New Leaders After Vote to Leave EU

    Whitehall London England
    View of the Houses of Parliament from Whitehall in London, England (Shutterstock/Alan Copson)
    • The contest to replace David Cameron as Conservative Party leader and prime minister starts today.
    • Stephen Crabb, the up-and-coming work and pensions secretary, has declared he will stand. So have John Baron and Liam Fox, two Euroskeptics.
    • Boris Johnson and Theresa May are expected to enter the contest today. (more…)

  • Vote to Leave EU Throws British Labour Party in Crisis

    British parliament London
    Westminster Palace in London, England (Unsplash/Matt Milton)
    • Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has lost the support of many of his lawmakers in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the EU.
    • Angela Eagle is expected to challenge Corbyn. Coming from the soft left of the party, she could be a unifying figure.
    • The Conservatives are looking for a new leader of their own after David Cameron announced he is stepping down as prime minister.
    • Boris Johnson, a top contender, has won the support of Justice Secretary Michael Gove, a fellow Euroskeptic.
    • Other candidates include Stephen Crabb, Sajid Javid and Theresa May. (more…)