British tabloid newspapers like to simplify complex
stories. In fact, that is the special skill their reporters must develop.
But they also distort stories on a daily basis, and in
an election campaign, any candidate aspiring to become prime minister with a radical,
left-wing programme is regarded as open
season from the Tory–backing press for a
battering.
And so it is with today’s most widely read national
newspaper, The Sun, which attacks Labour
leader Jeremy Corbyn for views he expressed on nuclear WMDs – such as the UK’s
Trident nuclear submarine and
ballistic nuclear missile system- in an interview
he did on Sunday morning with Andrew Marr.
The Sun trails its two page spread inside attack, with
a front page teaser, headlined “Corbyn
blasted in nuke pull-out”, in s which th epaper’s deputy political editor reports Corbyn (perniciously
dubbed a ”pacifist”) had indicated he “would be prepared to give up the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent if he becomes
PM.”
The inside story- headlined in the print version “Corbyn’s
nuclear disaster”- makes copious use of the bilious critical comments by two
former Labour MPs, who left the Labour Party because of vociferous opposition to Corbyn’s
leadership (“Jeremy
Corbyn could DITCH Britain’s Trident nuclear deterrent if he wins election,” The
Sun, 18 November 2019; www.thesun.co.uk/news/10363366/jeremy-corbyn-could-ditch-britains-trident-nuclear-deterrent-if-he-wins-election/).
Former
Labour MP John Woodcock, who used to represent Barrow-in-Furness, the hometown
of the BAE Systems shipyard that is building
the Trident replacement submarines – and incredibly used to worked
for Gordon Brown in No10 when he was Prime Minister a decade ago- said putting Mr
Corbyn in No10 would “leave the UK at the mercy of nuclear blackmail from
Vladimir Putin”.
He
told The Sun: “Labour’s lifelong CND-supporting leader gives the game away on
Trident every time he opens his mouth. It is absurd to suggest a Jeremy
Corbyn-led government would continue investing in the nuclear deterrent when
he’s already rendered it useless by saying there are no circumstances under
which he would even threaten to use it to discourage an enemy attack. Whether
it is a pact with the SNP, non-proliferation talks or because the month has the
letter ‘r’ in it, CND Corbyn and his hard left cabal will fall over themselves
to find a way to get round Labour’s fragile defence policy and scrap Trident.”
Ex-Labour
MP Mike Gapes, a former international affairs advisor to the Labour Party, and an
ex-chairperson of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, warned: “Once again Corbyn fails to support
Nato. He is not fit to be Prime Minister.”
The
Labour leader’s comments come a week after Shadow Defence Secretary Nia
Griffith was unable to say whether he would ever be prepared to push the
nuclear button.
Corbyn
had told Marr that Trident would be put on the table in international
negotiations as he pledged [the UK’s nuclear weapons] would be part - obviously
- if you enter into a non-proliferation treaty discussions then clearly every
country's nuclear weapons go into that equation.”
The Sun claimed that Corbyn had also refused
to rule out scrapping Trident as the price for the support of the anti-Trident
Scottish National Party (SNP)
Asked
if he would be prepared to scrap the atomic missile system if it was a price he
had to pay for SNP support, Mr Corbyn replied: “I think the SNP would actually
agreeing with me - and indeed in the past they certainly have - that the
priority has to be giving realism to the nuclear non-proliferation treaty,
giving realism to the six-party talks in Korea, giving realism to the whole
question of non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, in the Middle East or
anywhere else.”
In a forceful, but disingenuous, editorial comment,
under its banner ‘The Sun Says, the tabloid concluded that “putting Britain’s
security on the negotiating table is an abomination.”
Evidently
The Sun leader writer (and indeed nor
its editor) cares nothing about what the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty (NPT) -
referenced by Corbyn in his Marr interview - actually legally obliges the UK to
do. (The UK was a co-author of its text when it was drafted in the late 1960s,
and is one of three a depositary states, with the United States and Russia, for
the treaty)
ARTICLE VI
of the NPT states that:
Each of the
Parties to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on
effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early
date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete
disarmament under strict and effective international control.” (https://www.un.org/disarmament/wmd/nuclear/npt/text/)
So
far from an “abomination: it is an international legal obligation: to which
the objects, and about which it is so
dismissive.
This
week The Sun has been
celebrating fifty years of its existence
as a newspaper. The NPT is 51 years old. To date the UK has not negotiated away
a single nuclear weapon in a the half century the Sun has existed.
That
is the real atomic abomination.
Annex
Nuclear fishin’, The Sun Says, 18 November 2019
SO now we know. Jeremy Corbyn is ready to ditch our nukes to persuade
the SNP to put him in power.
Make
no mistake; this would be a disaster for Britain. Losing our Trident nuclear deterrent
would signal to our enemies that we are weak and naive about global
threats.
And
yet that is the bargaining chip the Labour leader is using to get into No10.
Corbyn’s ratings are now so
terrible that he’s had to grovel to Ian Blackford for extra support.
The
SNP’s Westminster leader responded by saying he would “come up with a wishlist”
of things he would demand as his price for a coalition, as if it were
Christmas.
Why
would Labour indulge him? So the SNP can take Scotland out of the UK once
Corbyn wins an election?
It
is an outrageous state of affairs.
More
so given that Remainer MPs repeatedly accused Boris Johnson of trying to break
up the Union.
Conversely,
he did everything to avoid that — painstakingly renegotiating the Irish border
deal and ruling out a Scottish independence referendum.
Corbyn,
on the other hand, casually bribes the SNP with the possibility of independence
and throws in nuclear disarmament for good measure
His
Marxist loons know they cannot win through normal methods; they are so
economically insane that they have had to resort to these cheap tricks.
But putting Britain’s security on the negotiating table is an abomination.
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