Boris Johnson's list of lies

[Twosugars]

It’s not just Boris Johnson’s lying. It’s that the media let him get away with it
Peter Oborne
The prime minister’s falsehoods are mostly left unchallenged. If this goes on, the integrity of our politics faces collapse


It’s Friday lunchtime and Boris Johnson is in Oldham. He’s live on Sky News, speaking to supporters in front of his Tory battle bus. During a speech lasting no more than 10 minutes, viewers learn that he is building 40 new hospitals. Sounds good. But it’s a lie that has already been exposed by fact-checkers, including the website Full Fact.

The prime minister tells Sky viewers that “20,000 more police are operating on our streets to fight crime and bring crime down”. This assertion is misleading in a number of ways. Recruitment will take place over three years and do no more than replace the drop in officer numbers seen since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

Sky viewers are then informed by Johnson that Jeremy Corbyn “plans to wreck the economy with a £1.2 trillion spending plan”. Labour’s manifesto hasn’t been published, let alone fully costed. Johnson’s £1.2tn is a palpable fabrication. As Full Fact concluded: “Many of the figures behind this estimate are uncertain or based on flawed assumptions.”

Johnson then goes on to say that the Labour leader “thinks home ownership is a bad idea and is opposed to it”. I have been unable to find any evidence of Corbyn expressing this view. Perhaps Johnson is referring to the floated Labour policy that would give “right to buy” to private tenants. The policy, which was only ever supposed to target the wealthiest landlords, has since been dropped and, according to the Financial Times, will not appear in the party’s manifesto.

Johnson then told his TV audience that Corbyn “wouldn’t even stick up for this country when it came to the Salisbury poisonings” and that he sided with Russia. Another obvious lie. In the aftermath of the poisonings, Corbyn wrote in the Guardian: “Either this was a crime authored by the Russian state; or that state has allowed these deadly toxins to slip out of the control it has an obligation to exercise.” The Labour leader also stated that the Russian authorities must be held to account.

Meanwhile, Johnson’s own government is refusing to publish a report into Russian interference in British politics amid reports that a number of wealthy businesspeople with links to Vladimir Putin have donated generously to the Tory party.

At the end of his speech, the Sky News presenter, Samantha Washington, strikingly made no attempt to challenge or correct any of Johnson’s false statements. This was just the latest example among many of the British media letting Johnson get away unchallenged with lies, falsehoods and fabrication.

Welcome to the Conservative party election campaign. I have been a political reporter for almost three decades and have never encountered a senior British politician who lies and fabricates so regularly, so shamelessly and so systematically as Boris Johnson. Or gets away with his deceit with such ease.

Some of the lies are tiny. During a visit to a hospital he tells doctors that he’s given up drink, when only the previous day he’d been filmed sipping whisky on a visit to a distillery. And sips beer on film the day after in a pub.

But many are big. Johnson repeatedly claims that Britain’s continued membership of the EU costs an extra £1bn a month. False.

He told activists that the Tories were building a new hospital in the marginal seat of Canterbury. False – and shockingly cynical.

He told Michael Crick that during the EU referendum campaign, “I didn’t make remarks about Turkey, mate.” He did.

On his potential conflict of interest over his friend Jennifer Arcuri, who received £11,500 from an organisation he was responsible for as London mayor, Johnson said: “Everything was done with complete propriety and in the normal way.” We now know he failed to declare this friendship, and is being investigated by the Independent Office of Police Conduct.

These lies point to a systemic dishonesty within Johnson’s campaigning machine. His party deliberately doctored footage of the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, to make it look as if he was at a loss for words when asked about Labour’s Brexit position. In fact, Starmer had answered confidently and fluently. The video was a deliberate attempt to mislead voters. And when Piers Morgan tackled the Tory chairman, James Cleverly, on the issue, he refused to accept he’d done anything wrong, let alone apologise.

Beyond Johnson and his cabinet, there are unscrupulous Tory briefers working behind the scenes. One of them told journalists last week that Johnson was going to accuse Corbyn of political “onanism” the following day. It was gleefully reported in some papers, but Johnson did not use the phrase in his speech. Political correspondents are being taken for a ride by the Downing Street machine, which is as contemptuous of newspaper readers as it is of the truth.

As someone who has voted Conservative pretty well all my life, this upsets me. As the philosopher Sissela Bok has explained, political lying is a form of theft. It means that voters make democratic judgments on the basis of falsehoods. Their rights are stripped away.

This matters more than ever because this election is the most important in modern British history. If Johnson wins, Britain will leave the EU within a matter of weeks and Johnson himself will serve a five-year term as prime minister.

In theory Johnson should not be able to get away with this scale of lying and deceit. In a properly functioning democracy, liars should be exposed and held to account. But that isn’t happening. As with Donald Trump, for Johnson there seems to be no political price to pay for deceit and falsehood. The mainstream media, as Washington’s response to Johnson’s speech shows, prefers to go along with his lies rather than expose them.

Recently the hugely experienced broadcaster Andrew Marr allowed Johnson to go unchallenged in saying the Tories “don’t do deals with other political parties”. What about the coalition government with the Liberal Democrats in 2010? Or the £1bn “confidence and supply” deal struck with the Democratic Unionist party just two years ago? Marr let Johnson get away with it. So do many others.

A big reason for Johnson’s easy ride is partisanship from the parts of the media determined to get him elected. I have talked to senior BBC executives, and they tell me they personally think it’s wrong to expose lies told by a British prime minister because it undermines trust in British politics. Is that a reason for giving Johnson free rein to make any false claim he wants?

Others take the view that all politicians lie, and just shrug their shoulders. But it’s not true that all politicians lie. Treating all politicians as liars gives a licence for the total collapse of integrity of British politics, a collapse that habitual liars such as Johnson are delighted to exploit. The British media is not holding him to account for his repeated falsehoods. It’s time we journalists did our job, and started to regain our self-respect.

• Peter Oborne is a journalist, commentator and author. His website about the lies, falsehoods and misrepresentations of Boris Johnson is at https://boris-johnson-lies.com

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/18/boris-johnson-lying-media

[Twosugars]

To follow are regular updates from the excellent website https://boris-johnson-lies.com/

[Kizzy]

The phrase 'Teflon tory' has never been more apt.

[Twosugars]

He will be found out. If not before election then after. You can only get that far by lying

[Twosugars]

“20,000 more police are operating on our streets to fight crime and bring crime down”
Boris Johnson in a speech in Oldham, live on Sky News

15 NOVEMBER 2019


Claim

The prime minister has regularly claimed that one of his government’s plans is to recruit 20,000 additional police officers. In this instance, he said that 20,000 more police “are operating” on our streets, suggesting that his government had already achieved this goal.

Facts

Recruitment will take place over three years and do no more than replace the drop in officer numbers seen since the Conservatives came to power in 2010.

Verdict

Johnson lied. It is a realistic possibility that the Conservatives will recruit an additional 20,000 police officers, but it will take several years and will only cover cuts they have already made.

[Zizu]

But all politicians lie , always have , always will ...


Why pick on Boris


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[Kizzy]

Why be so accepting of lies? .. why elect someone who is a proven and accepted liar and expect them to do what's right for the country?

I've heard of fuzzy logic but this is the fuzziest.

[Livia]

But all politicians lie , always have , always will ...


Why pick on Boris


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

Ahhh you're done it now. Kicked the hornet's nest. Good luck to you.

[Twosugars]

“We are getting on with a fantastic program … 20 hospital upgrades, 40 new hospitals”
Boris Johnson in a speech in Oldham, live on Sky News

15 NOVEMBER 2019


Facts

Only six hospitals have been allocated sufficient funding for rebuilding programmes. The Guardian’s health editor Sarah Boseley wrote that “almost all the money earmarked will go to just six NHS trusts, which each have a major hospital badly in need of rebuilding and have had plans waiting for approval.”

Chris Hopson, the chief executive of NHS Providers, the membership organisation of NHS trusts, said funding to complete schemes in 34 other hospitals “remains to be allocated.”

Full Fact concluded: “It’s correct that the government in this announcement has only allocated funding for six hospitals to receive building work by 2025. Up to 38 other hospitals will receive money to develop plans for upgrades between 2025 and 2030, but not to undertake any building work.”

Verdict

Johnson first delivered this lie to The Daily Telegraph. It has since featured prominently on Tory digital campaigning material.

When asked, the Conservative Party failed to give evidence that the prime minister will upgrade 20 hospitals and build 40 new hospitals.

[Kizzy]

Ahhh you're done it now. Kicked the hornet's nest. Good luck to you.

Can you explain this please, do you have an issue with the responses in this thread?

[Kazanne]

If we vote for someone who doesn't lie,none of us would be voting, so we have to go with who we think is the most truthful liar. just to balance things out https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/the-three-lies-that-jeremy-corbyn-told-andrew-neil/

[Gusto Brunt]

Lying is the new truth. :p

[Twosugars]

“If somebody asks you to [fill in a form], tell them to ring up the prime minister, and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin”
Boris Johnson, to manufacturers in Northern Ireland

7 NOVEMBER 2019


Claim
Johnson was responding to a Northern Irish exporter asking if he would have to fill in customs forms for goods going to Great Britain after Brexit. Johnson said: “You will absolutely not.” The prime minister had said in a speech: “There will not be checks on goods going from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.”
Johnson has made similar claims before. In parliament on 22 October he said: “There will be no checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.”

Three days after Johnson’s comments in Northern Ireland, the hapless Energy Minister Kwasi Kwarteng backed Johnson in an interview with Sky’s Sophie Ridge. He said Johnson was right in saying there would be no customs checks or forms: “As far as I understand I don’t think there will be. I think the prime minister’s absolutely right.”
Facts
Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay told the House of Lords in October that paperwork would be required for goods sent from Northern Ireland to Great Britain.
Verdict
The prime minister’s statement was a lie. Not for the first time, Kwarteng went on to parrot false statements made by a cabinet colleague.

[Liam-]

‘The most truthful liar’ is a very bizarre concept to base an election on

[Kazanne]

‘The most truthful liar’ is a very bizarre concept to base an election on

It's a bizarre selection .

[Kizzy]

If we vote for someone who doesn't lie,none of us would be voting, so we have to go with who we think is the most truthful liar. just to balance things out https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/the-three-lies-that-jeremy-corbyn-told-andrew-neil/

You can live in a post truth era if you want... what makes you think it will stop at politics? If you accept this then what's next, nicotine is a cure for cancer?
Green energy gives you aids?...

[Liam-]

It's a bizarre selection .

Not really, a proven liar, with bigoted tendencies, or a man who wants to help everyone and has fought against bigotry for his entire career, simple choice

[Denver]

Are we really gonna bring up links to Putin when your hero is best freinds with terrorists?

[Twosugars]

Are we really gonna bring up links to Putin when your hero is best freinds with terrorists?

Calling Corbyn a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ is just a way to prevent awkward questions
Daniel Finn
Labour’s leader draws fire because he doesn’t go along with the double standards ruling the UK’s relations with foreign powers

Last week Jeremy Corbyn was branded a “terrorist sympathiser” by a heckler in Glasgow, who demanded to know where his “Islamic jihad scarf” could be found.

The moment, gleefully covered by the rightwing press, lost some of its lustre when it emerged that the heckler, a Church of Scotland minister called Richard Cameron, allegedly had a back catalogue of Islamophobic and homophobic tweets. But the reverend’s terrorist sympathiser insult did not come out of nowhere. David Cameron, then serving as prime minister, denounced Corbyn and his colleagues in precisely the same terms when he opposed airstrikes in Syria in December 2015. And Boris Johnson accused Jeremy Corbyn of seeking to “legitimate the actions of terrorists” in his speech after the 2017 Manchester bombing.

Johnson seemed confident that public opinion would share his view of Corbyn’s speech as “absolutely monstrous”. But polls suggested that the majority of people agreed with the Labour leader that terrorist attacks on British soil were connected, at least in part, to the country’s foreign policy. The “terrorist sympathiser” label appears to be as subjective as the word “terrorist” itself.

Much of the criticism directed at Corbyn focuses on his relationship with Sinn Féin in the 1980s and 90s. During the 2017 general election campaign, Boris Johnson tweeted a photo of Corbyn with Martin McGuinness in 1995, deriding his claim to have never met the IRA: “You cannot trust this man!” By the time that photo was taken, the Sinn Féin leader, Gerry Adams, had already shaken hands with the then US president, Bill Clinton; two years later, McGuinness would be a guest in Downing Street. It has been widely reported that Adams and McGuinness were still members of the IRA’s army council at the time. But Clinton, Tony Blair and the Unionist leader David Trimble all held talks with them in their capacity as Sinn Féin politicians – a distinction vital for the entire peace process.

While successive prime ministers insisted publicly that they would never “talk with terrorists”, there was in fact discreet contact between British government officials and the IRA throughout the conflict. William Whitelaw, the secretary of state for Northern Ireland at the time, even negotiated directly with the IRA leadership during the truce of 1972. Pragmatic considerations trumped any sense of moral outrage.

Corbyn’s critics insist that his record of engagement with Irish republicans is very different, because he supported their political goals. It’s quite true that leading voices of the British Labour left argued for Irish unity in the 1980s, much to the displeasure of unionists in Britain and Northern Ireland alike. Corbyn himself wasn’t a prominent figure at the time, and became an MP only in 1983; Ken Livingstone, then head of the Greater London Council, was much better known, and his comments on the Northern Irish conflict attracted a great deal of controversy. If support for a united Ireland made Corbyn and Livingstone into fellow travellers of the IRA, by the same logic, those who defended the union with Britain shared a political objective with the loyalist paramilitaries responsible for hundreds of deaths during the Troubles. The argument of guilt by association can easily backfire on those who deploy it.

The Labour leader has also faced sharp criticism for his meeting with representatives of Hamas in 2009. But even Mike Gapes, the former Labour MP who is one of Corbyn’s fiercest critics, had called for talks with the “moderate” elements of Hamas in 2007, and Tony Blair later described the boycott of Hamas after it won the 2006 Palestinian elections as a mistake. Blair himself met in private the Hamas leaders Khaled Meshaal and Ismail Haniyeh only four years ago.

And while Corbyn expressed “regret” for using the term “friends” in reference to delegates from Hamas – after it elicited an indignant response from critics – there was no such outrage when Conservative and Labour politicians referred to the Saudi royal family as valued “friends”, allies and partners of the UK in the course of a parliamentary debate on continued arms sales for the Yemen war, which those MPs supported. It is certainly difficult to imagine a consistent set of principles for a prospective British prime minister that would put Hamas beyond the pale yet allow for a close relationship with the Saudi Arabian monarchy, given the UK’s support for its war in Yemen, which has killed tens of thousands of civilians.

Of course, violence against civilians – from the Isis-inspired massacres in France to the deliberate targeting of civilians in Yemen – is a crime in all circumstances. But the way we talk about terrorism, and the application of the “terrorist” label by governments, has always been arbitrary and self-serving. In the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan denounced the African National Congress in South Africa as terrorists, while supporting insurgent groups elsewhere whose record of violence against civilians was incomparably worse, from Angola to Afghanistan, Cambodia to Nicaragua. The Clinton administration initially branded the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) as a terrorist organisation, before enlisting it as an ally against Slobodan Milosevic. In recent years, the US and the UK have kept the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on their list of proscribed terrorist groups, but accepted Syrian groups closely linked with the PKK as partners in the war against Isis. “Terrorism”, in this sense, is simply the use of violence by non-state groups without the blessing of the US State Department.

If Corbyn had been willing to internalise this value system and its peculiar set of taboos, he would have attracted much less controversy in his time as Labour leader. But the foreign policy consensus works much better when it doesn’t have to be explicitly articulated by those who support it. Insults such as “terrorist sympathiser” are meant to discourage awkward questions about the double standards that govern Britain’s relationship with the outside world.

• Daniel Finn is a journalist and historian from Ireland, and author of One Man’s Terrorist: A Political History of the IRA
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/20/corbyn-terrorist-sympathiser-double-standards

[Zizu]

Not really, a proven liar, with bigoted tendencies, or a man who wants to help everyone and has fought against bigotry for his entire career, simple choice



Maybe a more balanced , possibly more realistic portrait of Corbyn may have been better ..


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[Zizu]

Are we really gonna bring up links to Putin when your hero is best freinds with terrorists?



You were slightly more direct than me ...


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[Twosugars]

Maybe a more balanced , possibly more realistic portrait of Corbyn may have been better ..


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Feel free to provide it. With proofs.

[Zizu]

Feel free to provide it. With proofs.



There’s really no point is there .. you’ve made your mind up on him ..




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[The Slim Reaper]

There’s really no point is there .. you’ve made your mind up on him ..




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This debate always goes the same way, and always ends when folks ask for proof.

[Kizzy]

There’s really no point is there .. you’ve made your mind up on him ..




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Aka there's no proof.

[jet]

Are we really gonna bring up links to Putin when your hero is best freinds with terrorists?

It's time to post this again, I see. Yes indeed, this is their hero and his cronies:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a...tain-rp79dvvmk

Quote:
Diane Abbott backed victory for the IRA in an interview with a pro-republican journal, The Sunday Times has found.
Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”
The interview was found during research by The Sunday Times in Irish and republican archives

Quote:
The same files disclose that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, personally led or took part in at least 72 separate events or actions with Sinn Fein and pro-republican groups during the years of the IRA’s armed struggle — far more than previously known.
These included a petition to Downing Street on behalf of Hugh Doherty, a member of the IRA’s Balcombe Street gang convicted of killing seven people, and protests against the extradition of Dessie Ellis, a top IRA bomb maker who has denied links to about 50 deaths.

Quote:
The archives also show the main IRA-sympathising groups in Britain held private strategy meetings in Corbyn’s former constituency office — owned by the Labour Party and part-funded by taxpayers from his MP’s allowance.

Quote:
The interview was published in Labour and Ireland, the journal of the Labour committee on Ireland (LCI), a small pro-republican support group in the party that operated at the height of the IRA’s armed struggle in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The archives disclose that LCI was chaired for some of the period by John McDonnell, now the shadow chancellor. Corbyn and Abbott were also regular speakers..
There were close links between LCI and the Troops Out Movement [Tom], another IRA-sympathising body with which Corbyn was closely associated. He spoke at more than 20 Troops Out events or meetings.

Quote:
Corbyn has claimed he was seeking peace. However, Seamus Mallon, deputy to John Hume, the former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and the architect of the peace process, told The Sunday Times: “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all.
“He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.”

https://www.irishnews.com/news/polit...hies--1032915/

Quote:
Secretary of State James Brokenshire has rounded on Jeremy Corbyn for his "IRA sympathies".
Mr Brokenshire accused the Labour leader and his party colleagues, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, of having "extremely worrying views" about IRA terrorism.
But Mr Brokenshire - who prior to the calling of the General Election had been facilitating talks between Stormont's Sinn Féin and the DUP in a bid to restore powersharing - demanded Mr Corbyn and his top team "come clean about their true attitudes towards IRA terrorism".
He accused Mr Corbyn of having a "long political career of sympathy for the IRA cause".

http://www.cityam.com/265655/jeremy-...le-ira-history

Quote:
His support for the IRA alone should have sunk Labour. In the 1980s, as the this ruthless mob murdered, kidnapped, assaulted and tortured people, Corbyn and his allies – including Diane Abbott and John McDonnell – supported the cause and befriended terrorists. The possibility that we might have a chancellor who once said: “it was the bombs and bullets… that brought Britain to the negotiating table”, or a home secretary who said that “every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us”, is madness; a sign of these unstable political times.

Quote:
Corbyn was later arrested while on a pro-IRA protest at the trial of the bomber who had killed five people and injured a further 31. He also wrote for and supported a socialist magazine which gloated about the bombing and threatened Margaret Thatcher with further attacks.

Quote:
Even Labour sympathisers found it hard to stomach Corbyn’s infatuation with the IRA. A 1996 editorial in the left-leaning Guardian, of all places, denounces his “romantic support for Irish Republicans” and states unequivocally: “Mr Corbyn's actions do not advance the cause of peace in Northern Ireland and are not seriously intended to do so”.



Quote:
For the truth, we need to listen to the real architects of the peace process who insist that these men had nothing at all to do with it.

Former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Seamus Mallon, said “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all. He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.” Sean O’Callaghan, an ex-IRA terrorist, said Corbyn “played no part ever, at any time, in promoting peace in Northern Ireland”, and any suggestion otherwise is “a cowardly, self-serving lie”.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/0...t-for-the-ira/

Quote:
It cannot be said too often that there is nothing intrinsically objectionable about supporting the idea of a united Ireland. But if you did – or still do – support that goal you had a choice. You could ally yourself with the SDLP or you could chum around with Sinn Fein and the IRA. The choice mattered because it was a choice between decency and indecency, between constitutional politics and paramilitary politics. Corbyn, like his Shadow Chancellor, made his choice and chose indecency.

Quote:
There is no room for doubt about this and no place for after-the-fact reinterpretations of Corbyn’s ‘role’ in the Irish peace process. That role was limited to being a cheerleader for and enabler of the Republican movement. No-one who was seriously interested in peace in the 1980s spoke at Troops Out rallies. The best that could be said of those people was that they wanted ‘peace’ on the IRA’s terms.

Quote:
Jeremy Corbyn didn’t help bring peace to Northern Ireland, he helped delay it by enabling those who bore primary responsibility for the violence. Now he and his supporters wish to rewrite history, the better to pretend Corbyn was somehow ‘ahead of the curve’. He was no such thing. His vision of peace did not advocate compromise and dialogue. If it had he might have spent more – or some – time speaking with Unionists and other parties with whose analysis he disagreed. But his vision did not do this and so he did not ‘engage’ with anyone in this fashion. No amount of whitewash can cover up this stain upon his record, his worldview and his judgement.

[Kizzy]

None of those links work

[smudgie]

It's time to post this again, I see. Yes indeed, this is their hero and his cronies:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a...tain-rp79dvvmk

Quote:
Diane Abbott backed victory for the IRA in an interview with a pro-republican journal, The Sunday Times has found.
Abbott, who will become home secretary if Labour wins the election, said in the 1984 interview that Ireland “is our struggle — every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us. A defeat in Northern Ireland would be a defeat indeed.”
The interview was found during research by The Sunday Times in Irish and republican archives

Quote:
The same files disclose that the Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, personally led or took part in at least 72 separate events or actions with Sinn Fein and pro-republican groups during the years of the IRA’s armed struggle — far more than previously known.
These included a petition to Downing Street on behalf of Hugh Doherty, a member of the IRA’s Balcombe Street gang convicted of killing seven people, and protests against the extradition of Dessie Ellis, a top IRA bomb maker who has denied links to about 50 deaths.

Quote:
The archives also show the main IRA-sympathising groups in Britain held private strategy meetings in Corbyn’s former constituency office — owned by the Labour Party and part-funded by taxpayers from his MP’s allowance.

Quote:
The interview was published in Labour and Ireland, the journal of the Labour committee on Ireland (LCI), a small pro-republican support group in the party that operated at the height of the IRA’s armed struggle in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The archives disclose that LCI was chaired for some of the period by John McDonnell, now the shadow chancellor. Corbyn and Abbott were also regular speakers..
There were close links between LCI and the Troops Out Movement [Tom], another IRA-sympathising body with which Corbyn was closely associated. He spoke at more than 20 Troops Out events or meetings.

Quote:
Corbyn has claimed he was seeking peace. However, Seamus Mallon, deputy to John Hume, the former Social Democratic and Labour Party leader and the architect of the peace process, told The Sunday Times: “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all.
“He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.”

https://www.irishnews.com/news/polit...hies--1032915/

Quote:
Secretary of State James Brokenshire has rounded on Jeremy Corbyn for his "IRA sympathies".
Mr Brokenshire accused the Labour leader and his party colleagues, shadow chancellor John McDonnell and shadow home secretary Diane Abbott, of having "extremely worrying views" about IRA terrorism.
But Mr Brokenshire - who prior to the calling of the General Election had been facilitating talks between Stormont's Sinn Féin and the DUP in a bid to restore powersharing - demanded Mr Corbyn and his top team "come clean about their true attitudes towards IRA terrorism".
He accused Mr Corbyn of having a "long political career of sympathy for the IRA cause".

http://www.cityam.com/265655/jeremy-...le-ira-history

Quote:
His support for the IRA alone should have sunk Labour. In the 1980s, as the this ruthless mob murdered, kidnapped, assaulted and tortured people, Corbyn and his allies – including Diane Abbott and John McDonnell – supported the cause and befriended terrorists. The possibility that we might have a chancellor who once said: “it was the bombs and bullets… that brought Britain to the negotiating table”, or a home secretary who said that “every defeat of the British state is a victory for all of us”, is madness; a sign of these unstable political times.

Quote:
Corbyn was later arrested while on a pro-IRA protest at the trial of the bomber who had killed five people and injured a further 31. He also wrote for and supported a socialist magazine which gloated about the bombing and threatened Margaret Thatcher with further attacks.

Quote:
Even Labour sympathisers found it hard to stomach Corbyn’s infatuation with the IRA. A 1996 editorial in the left-leaning Guardian, of all places, denounces his “romantic support for Irish Republicans” and states unequivocally: “Mr Corbyn's actions do not advance the cause of peace in Northern Ireland and are not seriously intended to do so”.



Quote:
For the truth, we need to listen to the real architects of the peace process who insist that these men had nothing at all to do with it.

Former deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, Seamus Mallon, said “I never heard anyone mention Corbyn at all. He very clearly took the side of the IRA and that was incompatible, in my opinion, with working for peace.” Sean O’Callaghan, an ex-IRA terrorist, said Corbyn “played no part ever, at any time, in promoting peace in Northern Ireland”, and any suggestion otherwise is “a cowardly, self-serving lie”.

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2016/0...t-for-the-ira/

Quote:
It cannot be said too often that there is nothing intrinsically objectionable about supporting the idea of a united Ireland. But if you did – or still do – support that goal you had a choice. You could ally yourself with the SDLP or you could chum around with Sinn Fein and the IRA. The choice mattered because it was a choice between decency and indecency, between constitutional politics and paramilitary politics. Corbyn, like his Shadow Chancellor, made his choice and chose indecency.

Quote:
There is no room for doubt about this and no place for after-the-fact reinterpretations of Corbyn’s ‘role’ in the Irish peace process. That role was limited to being a cheerleader for and enabler of the Republican movement. No-one who was seriously interested in peace in the 1980s spoke at Troops Out rallies. The best that could be said of those people was that they wanted ‘peace’ on the IRA’s terms.

Quote:
Jeremy Corbyn didn’t help bring peace to Northern Ireland, he helped delay it by enabling those who bore primary responsibility for the violence. Now he and his supporters wish to rewrite history, the better to pretend Corbyn was somehow ‘ahead of the curve’. He was no such thing. His vision of peace did not advocate compromise and dialogue. If it had he might have spent more – or some – time speaking with Unionists and other parties with whose analysis he disagreed. But his vision did not do this and so he did not ‘engage’ with anyone in this fashion. No amount of whitewash can cover up this stain upon his record, his worldview and his judgement.

Yes, Boris looks the better choice.:shrug:

[Crimson Dynamo]

Yes, Boris looks the better choice.:shrug:

of the 2 yes and i think the GBP will agree

[jet]

None of those links work

So? They did last year when I first posted that for the first time, and then again for the second time when you pretended not to see it. I know you remember it well, Kizzy. :wink:

[jet]

Here's a link that currently works Kizzy and a few snippets for you:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/Jeremy_Corbyn/11924431/Revealed-Jeremy-Corbyn-and-John-McDonnells-close-IRA-links.html

It can be disclosed that for seven years running, while the IRA “armed struggle” was at its height, Mr Corbyn attended and spoke at official republican commemorations to honour dead IRA terrorists, IRA “prisoners of war” and the active “soldiers of the IRA.”



Between 1986 and 1992, Mr Corbyn attended and spoke each year at the annual “Connolly/Sands” commemoration in London to honour dead IRA terrorists and support imprisoned IRA “prisoners of war.”

Programmes for the events have been obtained by the Telegraph.

The programme for the 1987 event, on May 16 of that year, praises the “soldiers of the IRA,” saying: “We are proud of our people and the revolutionaries who are an integral part of that people.”

[Kizzy]

That period in history was long and bloody, I have family stories handed down as have a lot of people.
I value diplomacy, I prefer those to speak first and bomb later. Knowing what we know of Corbyn I have no reason to believe that is not what he advocated during his meetings. He was not the first MP to have held talks and nor was he the last.

Do I feel that his support at that time should prevent him from becoming PM? No.
There are leaders going back generations as well as very recent ones who have links to tyrants and inhumane regimes. They all have to be held to the same standard or none.

[Kizzy]

You also have to take into consideration the people he supported in prison at the time who have since been pardoned or exonerated.

[jet]

That period in history was long and bloody, I have family stories handed down as have a lot of people.
I value diplomacy, I prefer those to speak first and bomb later. Knowing what we know of Corbyn I have no reason to believe that is not what he advocated during his meetings. He was not the first MP to have held talks and nor was he the last.

Do I feel that his support at that time should prevent him from becoming PM? No.
There are leaders going back generations as well as very recent ones who have links to tyrants and inhumane regimes. They all have to be held to the same standard or none.

Get real.
Which modern day PM or oppositon leader has previously attended funerals for terrorists, spoke at their rallies and offered such support for murderers?

[Kizzy]

I am real, I don't discriminate between murderers through the years there has been British support for all kinds of murderous regimes, there still is.

In the OP is an article written by a man who wrote a book called 'one man's terrorist', that is true enough.

[smudgie]

Get real.
Which modern day PM or oppositon leader has previously attended funerals for terrorists, spoke at their rallies and offered such support for murderers?

The worst thing about it is that mainland Britain as well as Northern Ireland were being bombed at the time he supported them.
He would have been hung for treason or had his head off in times gone by.

[jet]

I am real, I don't discriminate between murderers through the years there has been British support for all kinds of murderous regimes, there still is.

In the OP is an article written by a man who wrote a book called 'one man's terrorist', that is true enough.

No point in engaging with you Kizzy, and really taking the time to explain why your diversion tactic and answer is ludicrous. You seem blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to your hero. Terrorist supporter, anti - semitism enabler, nothing will sway you from your conviction that Corbyn is simply wonderful. :shrug:

[Kizzy]

No point in engaging with you Kizzy, and really taking the time to explain why your diversion tactic and answer is ludicrous. You seem blind, deaf and dumb when it comes to your hero. Terrorist supporter, anti - semitism enabler, nothing will sway you from your conviction that Corbyn is simply wonderful. :shrug:

I don't know what you want me to say..expecting me to support your view on one thing and then making wild accusation such as Corbyn is an anti semitism enabler ... I have a view and I'm not ignorant, I have looked at the accusations regarding the IRA and the condemnation of that organisation in relation to its bombing campaign, which he had no problem vocalising as you would expect.
On balance I would be happy for him to be PM, following the manifesto launch today his plan to renegotiate was welcomed by Ireland and the EU.

[user104658]

Corbyn refusing to condemn the IRA outright - then he hangs up.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8lqgTa2KVYhttps://media.giphy.com/media/3o7WIQ4FARJdpmUni8/giphy.gif

[jet]

I don't know what you want me to say..expecting me to support your view on one thing and then making wild accusation such as Corbyn is an anti semitism enabler ... I have a view and I'm not ignorant, I have looked at the accusations regarding the IRA and the condemnation of that organisation in relation to its bombing campaign, which he had no problem vocalising as you would expect.
On balance I would be happy for him to be PM, following the manifesto launch today his plan to renegotiate was welcomed by Ireland and the EU.

I'm not delusional. I was just wondering if you still supported Corbyn as strongly in his support of the IRA and I've got my answer. So no need to talk with you further. :shrug:

[Crimson Dynamo]

https://media.giphy.com/media/3o7WIQ4FARJdpmUni8/giphy.gif

you posted that before?

[Kizzy]

I'm not delusional. I was just wondering if you still supported Corbyn as strongly in his support of the IRA and I've got my answer. So no need to talk with you further. :shrug:

Well I hope now it's clear, I support him. I support all his endeavours into injustice , I supported his fight against apartheid too. I support his condemnation of what is happening to Palestinians. And I support his need to tackle inequality in this country.

[jet]

Well I hope now it's clear, I support him. I support all his endeavours into injustice , I supported his fight against apartheid too. I support his condemnation of what is happening to Palestinians. And I support his need to tackle inequality in this country.

Yet not a word about the injustice suffered by the thousands of innocent men, women and children murdered by his friends the IRA or their families. You make my blood run cold. Putting you on ignore now.

[Josy]

Title has been edited.

Please dont use silly immature thread titles in this section, it baits negative reactions and detracts from sensible discussion.

Thanks.

[Kizzy]

Yet not a word about the injustice suffered by the thousands of innocent men, women and children murdered by his friends the IRA or their families. You make my blood run cold. Putting you on ignore now.

You do what you need to do, there were victims on both sides as you well know. Please don't insinuate I condone violence from any faction.