Daily Times

It seems that Britain’s Cold War propaganda machine has not yet mastered time travel. For, to misquote the famous song: it thinks its back in the USSR. And much of the country’s press are having a field day as they promote the image of Commie Corbyn.

This manufactured scandal casts opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn as a paid informant for the Czech secret service — which itself was believed to be a front for the Soviet KGB — during the last half of the Cold War. This is something that the Czech authorities, as well as Jezza himself, have trashed. Though the latter has admitted to having a cuppa with the spy in the House of Commons as he believed that he was a diplomat. Naturally this hasn’t stopped the Beeb from asking a Labour MP if she were comfortable with the current party leader being a person of interest to Prague at a time when it was considered an enemy of Britain.

This points to the way in which the British media continues to do the state’s bidding. Instead of acting as a keeper of checks-and-balances, the country’s fourth estate is more favourable to upholding establishment narrative. Indeed, the same sort of dirty tricks were at play two years before Labour lost the 2015 general elections under the stewardship of Ed Miliband. Back then, the Daily Mail took it upon itself to highlight the ‘red’ credentials of Mr Miliband’s father and his Marxist ways. Only it did so under this fear mongering headline: A man who hated Britain.

Quite predictably, Prime Minister Theresa May appears to have got on board with this latest attempt to malign Corbyn; who has for all intents and purposes proven himself to be the peoples’ choice for the top job. After all, she has called for the Czech file on her fiercest opponent to be made public in the interest of transparency. This, of course, is nothing short of a selective approach to putting everything on the table. For had the PM been truly committed to having everyone know everything — all in the national interest — she might have done better to start with calling for every single government inquiry into the Iraq war to be made public. Just as it would have been beneficial for the government under her predecessor, David Cameron, to have immediately handed over to the courts the recording of the telephone conversation between Bush and Blair on the eve of the Iraq war of aggression.

As things stand, however, this attempt to portray anyone who stands up to the establishment’s world view of foreign policy as an enemy of the state is not only churlish but undermines Britain’s democratic principles. And the latter is something that Mr Corbyn knows a thing or two about.  *

Published in Daily Times, February 21^st 2018.