By Laura Tiernan
2 November 2019
2 November 2019
US President Donald Trump
intervened at the start of Britain’s snap general election campaign Thursday to
publicly attack Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, warning that a Corbyn
premiership would take the UK into “bad places.”
Trump’s statements were issued
during an extended live interview with Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage on LBC
radio, where Farage has hosted since January 2017.
“Corbyn would be so bad for
your country, he’d be so bad, he’d take you on such a bad way, he’d take you into
such bad places,” he told Farage.
Most media coverage of Trump’s
phone call has focused on his pro-Brexit message in calling for an alliance
between Conservative Party Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Farage. “I would
really like to see you and Boris get together [be]cause you would really have
some numbers,” he said, before warning the Tory leader to be “very careful” not
to back away from a break with the European Union. Johnson’s withdrawal
agreement meant that “we can’t make a trade deal,” he declared—blowing a hole
in the government’s post-Brexit strategy.
In contrast, Trump’s ominous
attack on Corbyn was swiftly passed over. But his intervention comes less than
four months after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warned the US government
would not allow a Corbyn government to take office and would “push back” to
prevent this.
Pompeo’s threats, made at a
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations on June 3, were
“leaked” by the Washington Post and coincided with a three-day state
visit by Trump to the UK. Pompeo said, “It could be that Mr. Corbyn manages to
run the gauntlet and get elected. It’s possible. You should know, we won’t wait
for him to do those things to begin to push back. We will do our level best …
It’s too risky and too important and too hard once it’s already happened.”
The motive behind Trump’s
latest intervention was made clear within hours. For more than three years,
contending factions of the ruling class have sought to dragoon the working
class behind either a pro-EU or Brexit agenda. But two events on Thursday
showed that class issues are coming to the fore.
The first was Johnson’s visit
to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge. Leaving the hospital after a staged
photo opportunity, Johnson was booed and jeered by dozens of patients and
National Health Service staff.
The same morning, a BBC radio
interview with Labour MP Lloyd Russell-Moyle backfired in spectacular fashion,
after host Emma Barnett attacked Labour’s mild proposals to increase the tax
rate for billionaires. Barnett response to Moyles’ statement that “I don’t
think anyone in this country should be a billionaire” was nakedly hostile. “Why
on earth shouldn’t people be able to be billionaires,” she asked, “Some people
aspire to be a billionaire in this country. Is that a dirty thing?”
By mid-afternoon #Billionaires
was the top-trending item on social media. Video footage of Barnett’s incensed
defence of the financial oligarchy became the subject of popular derision:
“An average NHS worker would
need to work 100m hrs to earn £1bn. Working daily, 24 hrs a day, for 11,400
YEARS. i.e. since the end of the last Ice Age and the dawn of urban
civilisation and the domestication of cattle,” one Twitter user responded,
concluding, “Billionaires haven’t ‘earned’ their wealth. They stole it.”
“It wasn’t 39 billionaires who
were found dead in the back of refrigerated container in Essex,” wrote another.
Corbyn’s election campaign
seeks to politically channel the mass opposition of workers and young people to
endless austerity and social inequality behind the pro-capitalist programme of
the Labour Party. His election videos promise a “once in a generation
opportunity” to “put wealth and power in the hands of the many not the few.” By
Thursday, a surge in voter registrations—316,264 in just 48 hours—pointed to
the hunger for political change among young people. Nearly one third of
registrations were from those aged 18-24.
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