Fury at Corbyn Isis gaffe
He claims US troops should have arrested terror chief
JEREMY Corbyn was last night accused of being ‘naïve to the point of being dangerous’ after he claimed that the US should have arrested the world’s most wanted terrorist.
Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi blew up himself and two children by detonating his suicide vest during a raid last month by American forces.
US President Donald Trump said the extremist ‘died like a dog’ and was ‘crying and screaming’ as he tried to flee after a firefight in northern Syria.
But Mr Corbyn said the terror leader should instead have been detained as this would have been the ‘right thing’ to do. He made the comments in a radio interview as he began a two-day visit to Scotland, during which he was branded a ‘terrorist sympathiser’ by a Church of Scotland minister. On a day of fiascos for Labour: Mr Corbyn claimed he would block an independence referendum for the ‘first term’ of a Labour government – only to backtrack hours later and say that he would not allow a vote in his ‘early years’ in power;
Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell slapped down Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth for suggesting NHS staff would be exempt from plans for a four-day working week;
The Centre-Left Resolution Foundation think-tank warned families and businesses could pay £60billion more in tax under Labour’s plans compared with those of the Conservatives – and Mr McDonnell confirmed Labour would raise taxes for everyone earning more than £80,000 a year;
Splits over the free movement of people deepened as Unite union chief Len McCluskey insisted this should not continue after Brexit.
Mr Corbyn told LBC: ‘Him [alBaghdadi] being removed from the scene is a very good thing.
‘If it would have been possible to arrest him – I don’t know the details of the circumstances at the time, I’ve only seen various statements put out by the US – surely that would have been the right thing to do. If we want to live in a world of peace and justice, we should practise it.’ The remarks echo comments by Mr Corbyn in 2011, when he said it was a ‘tragedy’ Osama Bin Laden had been killed rather than put on trial.
Last night, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said: ‘Al Baghdadi was an absolutely diabolical foe of this country, of our values... he was responsible for untold murders.
‘I do not think it is realistic to suggest he could just be apprehended... [Mr Corbyn’s] approach is naïve, it is naïve to the point of being dangerous.’
Security Minister Brandon Lewis said: ‘Corbyn’s comments are more proof of his flawed judgment and inability to stand up to people who reject our values.
‘Every time he is given the opportunity to take the side of this country’s enemies, he does so.’
Colonel Richard Kemp, who commanded forces in Afghanistan, said: ‘[It is] impossible to take such a person seriously.
‘It would be horrific from the point of view of national security to imagine him in No 10.’
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn was heckled yesterday by Rev Richard Cameron, a minister at Scotstoun Parish Church in Glasgow, as he arrived at a nearby community centre. After the Labour leader, wearing a tartan scarf, stepped off his campaign bus, Mr Cameron said: ‘I thought you would be wearing your Islamic jihad scarf.
‘Do you think the man that is going to be prime minister of this country should be a terrorist sympathiser, Mr Corbyn? Who is going to be the first terrorist invited to the House of Commons when you are prime minister?’
Mr Cameron said he had wanted to highlight some of Mr Corbyn’s ‘dangerous traits’ and that his ‘terrorist sympathiser’ comment related to him inviting convicted IRA volunteers to the Commons. Labour sources later highlighted ‘radical’ online comments by Mr Cameron, which they described as Islamophobic and homophobic.
The Church of Scotland said ‘significant concern’ had been raised about some of Mr Cameron’s social media posts, adding: ‘Any complaints we receive will be taken seriously and addressed. We deplore any comments which are Islamophobic or homophobic.’
Labour said it had not contacted the Church about Mr Cameron.
LABOUR’S election campaign lurched from the confusing, through the contradictory, to the downright surreal yesterday.
First there were policy car crashes on tax, free movement and whether the muchheralded four-day working week should apply to NHS staff.
Then came a truly bizarre intervention from party leader Jeremy Corbyn on his pet subject, terrorism.
With a completely straight face, he said the Americans should have tried to arrest Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the blood-soaked leader of Islamic State, who blew up himself and two children during a raid on his Syrian lair by US special forces.
How does Mr Corbyn think they might have done that? Taken a policeman along to read him his rights? Asked him to accompany them to the nearest station?
This was not some ordinary criminal. He was the world’s most wanted man; a mass murderer, serial rapist, head of a psychotic death cult waging war on the West.
And he was wearing a fully primed suicide vest. Does Mr Corbyn really think he was going to come quietly? The idea is absurd. But Mr Corbyn always seems to sympathise with the enemies of Britain and the West – from the IRA to Hamas and Hezbollah. He opposes Nato and described the killing of Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden by the US military as ‘a tragedy’.
Imagine how dangerous this man would be in charge of our national security.
Meanwhile yesterday, other major planks of Labour policy were splintering. Shadow Health Secretary Jonathan Ashworth said the planned four-day working week would not apply to NHS staff. Yes it would, insisted Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell. Some free movement of EU nationals should still apply after Brexit, said Mr Ashworth. No it should not, claimed trade union baron and Labour Party paymaster Len McCluskey. But perhaps the most penetrating assessment of Labour’s anticipated manifesto commitments came from a Left-leaning think-tank, the Resolution Foundation. It estimated Labour would have to raise £60billion more in tax than the Conservatives to realise its policies.
In its election slogan, Labour says it will deliver ‘real change’. That’s not a promise, it’s a chilling and very real threat.
To characterise Jeremy Corbyn’s stance on the Union as flip-flopping would be one of the great understatements of political history.
Yesterday he dismissed any notion of a second Scexit vote in Labour’s ‘first term’ in power, only to soften his position later in the day, when he said another independence referendum might be granted if the SNP wins the Holyrood election in 2021.
Then there was a rapid gear change when he said Labour might give its blessing to a vote on independence in its ‘early years’ in government.
It does not take any great strategic intellect to know that Mr Corbyn would sanction in a heartbeat a rerun of the divisive 2014 referendum in order to get into power.
And we know from her public statements that Nicola Sturgeon is prepared to turn a blind eye to Labour’s anti-Semitism problem to help propel the Labour leader into Downing Street. Mr Corbyn places no value on the continuation of the United Kingdom but instead chooses a new line depending on the audience – on what he believes he can get away with at any given moment.
It is a desperately sad development for a party that stood alongside the Tories five years ago to see off the separatist threat to our Union.
But voters will not be taken for fools – and they know that Mr Corbyn cannot be trusted for a second to preserve our historic alliance of nations.