Corbyn on the Skripal Affair

In The Guardian yesterday Jeremy Corbyn penned a defense of his stance regarding the Skripal affair, "The Salisbury attack was appalling. But we must avoid a drift to conflict." His position is more hawkish than is being presented in the mainstream media. For instance, he applauds prime minister Theresa May's expulsion of Russian diplomats, and he calls for cracking down on the many Russian oligarchs who shelter on Britain's shores:

We agree with the government’s action in relation to Russian diplomats, but measures to tackle the oligarchs and their loot would have a far greater impact on Russia’s elite than limited tit-for-tat expulsions. We are willing to back further sanctions as and when the investigation into the Salisbury attack produces results.

The Tory government seems willing to take up Corbyn's idea of seizing Russian tycoon assets, but limiting the seizure to Putin's allies.

What set off the attacks on Corbyn was his statement of the obvious: We don't know who poisoned Skripal and his daughter, and trusting the government in these matters has gone very badly of late:

[T]hat does not mean we resign ourselves to a “new cold war” of escalating arms spending, proxy conflicts across the globe and a McCarthyite intolerance of dissent. Instead, Britain needs to uphold its laws and its values without reservation. And those should be allied to a foreign policy that uses every opportunity to reduce tensions and conflict wherever possible.

This government’s diplomacy is failing the country. Unqualified support for Donald Trump and rolling out the red carpet for a Saudi despot not only betrays our values, it makes us less safe.

And our capacity to deal with outrages from Russia is compromised by the tidal wave of ill-gotten cash that Russian oligarchs – both allied with and opposed to the Russian government – have laundered through London over the past two decades. We must stop servicing Russian crony capitalism in Britain, and the corrupt billionaires who use London to protect their wealth.

[snip]

But if we are to unite our allies behind action that needs taking, we must make full use of existing international treaties and procedures for dealing with chemical weapons. That means working through the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons to reduce the threat from these horrific weapons, including if necessary an investigation by chemical weapons inspectors into the distribution of Soviet-era weapons.

There can and should be the basis for a common political response to this crime. But in my years in parliament I have seen clear thinking in an international crisis overwhelmed by emotion and hasty judgments too many times. Flawed intelligence and dodgy dossiers led to the calamity of the Iraq invasion. There was overwhelming bipartisan support for attacking Libya, but it proved to be wrong. A universal repugnance at the 9/11 attacks led to a war on Afghanistan that continues to this day, while terrorism has spread across the globe.

Can't really dispute that. And I think that's what's behind the howls of derision in the tabloids. When you are actively engaged in a "big lie" you can't have someone of prominence stand and state the obvious.

The New York Times, always on the lookout to skewer Corbyn, hopped on the bandwagon with Stephen Castle's "U.K. Labour Leader’s Stance on Russian Ex-Spy’s Poisoning Splits Party." Fortunately Castle lets the sunshine in at the end of his article. The Blairites within Labour can't touch Corbyn:

But one commentator, John Rentoul, suspects that there is more support for Mr. Corbyn’s position outside Parliament where, he wrote, the Labour leader’s “idealistic opposition to warlike words goes down well with much of the general public.” And it remains true that despite the strong circumstantial evidence of Russian involvement, the British police have neither identified any direct link to the Kremlin nor named any suspects.

Whether Mr. Corbyn pays a political price for his stance may depend on how the Anglo-Russian rift develops. His supporters are likely to give him the benefit of the doubt, and most of his internal critics are already well-known opponents. While his comments gave plenty of ammunition to the right-wing press, many analysts, pointing to last year’s elections when the tabloids vilified the Labour leader, concluded that he might wear their criticism as a badge of honor.

The Italian elections, May's shuckin' and jivin' on Brexit, Trump's apparent longevity all point to the neoliberal center Washington Consensus in serious trouble. For those in power the solution is to lock in a New Cold War. Stifle dissent. Cement in narrow boundaries for political discourse.

It's a long shot. It will buy the discredited neoliberal center some more time. How much more is the question. But inevitably there will be a correction.