Jeremy Corbyn goes head-to-head with Boris Johnson in UK election
Despite his views towards terrorists and blowing up the country’s budget, British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn has a chance at winning next month’s UK general election.
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British Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn expresses sympathy for terrorists, wants to blow his country’s budget out by trillions, and is the least popular leader of a UK political party in recent memory.
But despite all that, he still may have a chance, if seats fall his way, in next month’s election as Britain’s topsy turvy politics continues to throw up surprises.
The opposition leader is fighting an uphill battle against Boris Johnson’s Tories in the UK general election next month but a rocky Conversative campaign and a divided electorate have given the far-left socialist a fighting, if slim, chance of taking government next month.
Current polls give the Tories anywhere from a seven to 14 point lead over Labour as the British Prime Minister seeks a majority to finally deliver Brexit.
Mr Johnson has faced his own woes this week from a slow response to devastating floods, attacks from Hillary Clinton over the influence of Russian spies, and a series of blunders by his own ministers.
It is a sign of a Conservative campaign that is getting an election on nearly anything but Brexit, and could allow Corbyn into Number 10 on the back of deals with minor parties and dissatisfaction with Mr Johnson.
But Mr Corbyn has problems of his own, and they are his own making.
He was greeted by a Church of Scotland minister who let out a shocking heckle this week.
“Who’s the first terrorist you’re going to invite to No 10?” the Scotsman shouted at Mr Corbyn.
If it had been an Australian political leader accused of being a terrorist sympathiser, it would have rocked the nation. But the UK Labour leader does have form when it comes to sympathising with terrorists.
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Mr Corbyn said that same day that if the West wanted to live in a world of “peace and justice,” US forces should have arrested mass-murdering ISIS chief Abu Bakr Al-Bagdadi, despite the fact he blew himself and two children up with a suicide vest.
“If it would have been possible to arrest him, I don’t know the details of the circumstances at the time,” Mr Corbyn told LBC radio on Wednesday.
“I have only seen various statements put out by the US about it, surely that would have been the right thing to do.”
“If we want to live in a world of peace and justice we should practice it as well.”
Mr Corbyn has appeared overly sympathetic towards terrorists before.
In 2015, he told Iranian television that it was a “shame” that Osama bin Laden had been killed rather than arrested.
He has also called Islamist terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah his “friends” at a parliamentary meeting in 2009.
Mr Corbyn spent years campaigning for the release of members of the Irish Republican Army, who murdered hundreds of Brits from the 1970s to the 1990s.
The Labour leader has also been tarred as an anti-Semite. He has been slow to kick out Labour MPs and activists close to him who have despicable things about Jewish people.
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Former Labour MPs and ex-party activists like Labour Against anti-Semitism’s Euan Phillips are now urging left-wing voters to vote “anyone but Corbyn” in order to stop him from taking control.
“The Labour Party is now an institutionally anti-Semitic party,” Mr Phillips said earlier this month.
“If Corbyn loses in December, there may be a chance for the Labour Party. If he wins, I suspect personally that I will be helping some of my Jewish friends pack. They will want to leave.”
Mr Corbyn himself has been dogged by allegations he is also anti-Semitic.
The Labour leader in 2012 protested the removal of a street mural showing elderly Jewish men playing Monopoly on the pack of emaciated bodies. He later claimed he did not look closely enough at the building-size artwork.
In August 2018, Jewish groups criticised him and Mr McDonnell for supporting a parliamentary motion calling for Holocaust Memorial Fay to be renamed “Genocide Memorial Day.”
He attended and held a wreath at a ceremony in Tunisia in 2014 which was claimed to be a memorial for the perpetrators of the 1972 Munich massacre, in which 11 members of Israel’s Olympics team were murdered. Mr Corbyn said he was at the ceremony to honour victims of a 1985 Israel air strike.
And in 2013, he told a conference that British Zionists had “no sense of British irony”.
Then there are Labour’s far-left economic policies.
Mr Corbyn says he wants a four-day working week, renationalisation of a swag of key UK industries, getting rid of private schools, and massive taxes on big businesses and the rich.
Those policies were popular at the 2017 election where Mr Corbyn very nearly beat Theresa May, but Mr Johnson is a much better campaigner than her.
And he is hoping Labour voters will head to him in droves to get Brexit done and avoid a Corbyn government.
Alan Sherlock, 71, has cleaned windows in the Labour-dominated Northern city of Manchester for 54 years.
The window-cleaner will back the Tories in this upcoming election and thinks other Manchester voters could follow suit.
“Boris is mad but that’s what you need. You need someone with different ideas,” the window cleaner told News Corp Australia.
“People around here could switch from Labour to Boris. He could be like Trump, you know. Because he’s getting things done.”
Patricia, 65, is an Irish immigrant to Manchester has also become a fan of the Conservative leader.
“Boris is going to give Brexit a shot. I don’t like politicians but I like Boris. He says what he thinks,” she said.
Even pro-EU voters like Jessica Page-Campbell, a 20-year-old UberEats worker, are unsure about Corbyn even if he is offering a second referendum on Brexit.
“I would have voted Remain if I had been old enough in 2016. People have definitely changed their minds,” she said.
“Jeremy Corbyn needs to let someone take over now. He’s not the right sort of person … I might go for the Greens.”
Mr Johnson hopes that a split in the Remain vote will help him take seats Labour have held for nearly 100 years, but he has faced his own problems in recent days.
It took several days for the UK prime minister to convene an emergency cabinet meeting over the devastating floods in Yorkshire and when he arrived to help with the clean up on Wednesday, there were more than a few hecklers.
“Where have you been? … it’s too little, too late,” one woman in Yorkshire shouted at the Prime Minister, as they both stood knee-deep in flood waters.
To add to Mr Johnson’s woes, one of his cabinet ministers – Alun Cairns – was forced to resign last week after he lied about knowing one of his staff allegedly sabotaged a rape trial.
Another cabinet minister, Jacob Rees-Mogg, was forced to apologise for insulting survivors of the Grenfell Tower disaster.
Mrs Clinton called Mr Johnson’s government “shameful” for not releasing a report which contains allegations Russian spies tried to influence the 2016 Brexit referendum.
And he is forever dogged by questions around his much younger girlfriend Carrie Symonds, his slew of failed marriages and affairs, and allegations he has fathered a number of illegitimate children.
While he is still behind, Mr Corbyn has seized on all these Tory blunders and polls show he is creeping back up as voters – especially pro-EU ones – consider him to be the only alternative to Mr Johnson.
Manchester tradie Daniel Gouth, 27, wants a second referendum and sees no other choice than Labour.
“Boris is the worst prime minister we’ve ever had. You can’t back everything Jeremy Corbyn says either, but he’s the only viable alternative.”
In Scotland, there is a whole other election contest going on where Brexit is definitely the second order issue. It may be Corbyn’s ticket to Number 10.
The Scottish Government’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon is hoping her Scottish Nationalist Party will grab most of the 59 seats in Scotland – which polls are predicting – and can then hold a vote on her country leaving the United Kingdom altogether.
If the Tories fail to win a pro-Brexit majority in parliament, Mr Corbyn could end up getting into Number 10 off the back of a deal with Ms Sturgeon to allow a Scottish independence referendum by 2021.
This election will be a series of regional contests where different things – not just Brexit – matter and where old party bases are totally split. Corbyn could just creep up the middle if the Tories don’t get a majority.
There was one voter in Glasgow – 86-year-old Annie Caskie – who spoke for a lot of voters in this UK general election faced with flawed choices and so much at stake.
“Never voted Tory and that Boris is a womaniser. Don’t trust Corbyn, he’s a communist,” she said.
“I voted to remain in the EU so Farage is out. I can’t stand that Lib Dem woman (Jo Swinson) and no way I’m voting for Nicola Sturgeon, we don’t want a separate Scotland.
“I’ve always voted. But who do I vote for now?”
