On Jeremy Corbyn’s patriotism, Owen Smith has given himself another shot in the foot
Owen Smith denigrates opponent Jeremy Corbyn’s patriotism on the BBC’s Newsnight.
Why can’t Labour leadership challenger Owen Smith simply shut up about Jeremy Corbyn and try talking about his own beliefs and policies?
For a start – as This Blog has already discussed – he seems determined to discuss Mr Corbyn in an offensive way. This time we were told Mr Corbyn “doesn’t really understand” British people’s sense of national identity. That’s an attempt to belittle Mr Corbyn; to demean him.
Then there’s the question of how one best supports the British national identity.
For example, we know that Jeremy Corbyn thinks UK utility companies should be owned by UK people, instead of being sold off to foreign companies and nationalised industries.
Mr Corbyn thinks companies that make a profit in the UK should pay tax on all of those profits – in the UK.
And UK steel companies should benefit from UK-based contracts.
What’s Mr Smith’s response to these patriotic and principled positions?
Here is a handy checklist of Mr Corbyn’s patriotic beliefs, including the above with a few more added in. Feel free to copy the image and post it anywhere you think appropriate.
Owen Smith said Jeremy Corbyn “doesn’t really understand” patriotism or national identity, tonight.
He suggested the Labour leader doesn’t get that many Scottish, Welsh and English people have a “strong sense of…where they’re from.”
Mr Smith, who is campaigning to unseat Mr Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party , said Mr Corbyn has a more “metropolitan” sense, which doesn’t tally with the Labour tradition.
Speaking to BBC Newsnight, Mr Smith said he and Mr Corbyn had a “different position” on patriotism.
He explained: “Well, I think Jeremy doesn’t really understand sometimes, the way in which people have a very strong, perhaps socially conservative – conservative with a small c – sense of place. Sense of where they’re from. I’m not sure I’ve heard him talking much about Scotland and identity, or Wales and identity or indeed about England and identity.
“I suspect that Jeremy’s got a rather more metropolitan sense of that, and that’s not one I think that is central to the Labour tradition.”
Asked if he was saying Mr Corbyn was unpatriotic, he said: “I’m saying that it’s not something that is core to his set of beliefs. I think he’s got a set of liberal perspectives and left perspectives on things and nationhood and nationalism and patriotism aren’t really part of his makeup.”
Source: Owen Smith says Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t understand patriotism and national identity – Mirror Online
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Those Pseudo Labour would be leaders who have let Jeremy and all of us down so badly are ruining our chances of winning the next election and all they care about are their own personal ambitions.
Rather than be connected with such treachery I would leave the party if Jeremy is not elected and those pseudo Labour MPs removed once and for all.
If you can’t defend your corner without resorting to personal abuse, then something is wrong with your corner
owen who or sorry that back stabber that blairite that promise the world and get nowt ouch just another cameroooon in a red tie
I support a democratically elected leader far more than someone who then tries to undemocratically remove him from power using lies and pre-arranged PR stunts!
That stinks of Westminster, where Corbyn would introduce a breath of fresh air – Perhaps that’s to blame, maybe they’re afraid if Corbyn comes to power the population at large will come to realise just how much they’ve been taken for a ride over the past few decades and demand some justice in return!
What a horrid little man, and a squalid little campaign.
So while the Right, Tory or Labour, show their patriotic zeal by backing the selling off of most everything belonging to our country to any foreign bidder, until there will be little remaining here that is British; anyone challenging this corporate-hugging foreign-owning profit-squeezing style of loving of our country and demanding a halt, and that the assests of our country be returned to us, is declared unpatriotic and not understanding our sense of national identity; which is to say, how very peeved off we are about it.
You couldn’t make it up. Which we don’t need to do, as the invention has already been done for us.
Corbyn understands all too well that we’re fed up with the overall corporate rip-off, and want put back into British public ownership our power providers, hospitals, schools, railways, post offices, and much else. While what the Right can’t understand is little beyond how much money and advantage can be made from any deal, and don’t really care at all about how much it damages our country.