Tough luck, Michael Fallon (and Andrew Marr, as you’ll see) – you met your match in Labour’s Emily Thornberry!

Mr Marr probably thought he had set a nice trap for Ms Thornberry, asking her about Jeremy Corbyn’s connection with the IRA – but in fact it’s an old chestnut that has long since been cracked.

For anybody who doesn’t know, the allegation is that Mr Corbyn is chums with terrorists because he actually dared to have open negotiations with them, back in the day. Of course, it has since been revealed that successive UK governments, who had spent 30 years claiming not to do deals with terrorists, had in fact been negotiating with them in secret. And Mr Corbyn’s way of handling terrorism led to the Northern Ireland peace process and the Good Friday Agreement.

In summary: Mr Corbyn was honest and his way led to peace; the UK goverenments were liars and they only got peace when they took a leaf out of his book.

Have some proof:

Ms Thornberry wasn’t having any of the nonsense. She made the points I’ve just reiterated above – then dropped a bombshell on Mr Fallon who, it transpired, has been on very good terms with Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria, in the past.

Mr Fallon tried to assert that there was a “huge moral difference” between meeting (and supporting) dodgy foreign leaders and what he called Jeremy Corbyn’s “open support for the IRA”.

The claim that Mr Corbyn supported the IRA is a lie, of course. He never supported terrorism and only ever worked for a peaceful solution to what was then known as ‘The Troubles’.

Ms Thornberry stamped on it, hard: “You really can’t just go around making this stuff up. There’s an election on and people need to make decisions on the basis of the truth.

“You’ve just said I want to negotiate the future of the Falklands. That is” “bollocks.”

“It’s not right for you to go slinging around dead cats the way that you do.”

See for yourself:

But Mr Fallon doesn’t really need Emily Thornberry to make him look a fool. He’s doing very well at that, all by himself.

Here’s a short video showing the Tory record on defence:

Apparently Mr Fallon has promised more defence spending when the economy improves.

But UK economic growth has been falling – to just 0.3 per cent at the end of April.

So Mr Fallon has nothing, and is promising nothing.

Meanwhile the Tories and their poodles in the mainstream press are attacking Jeremy Corbyn’s promise that a Labour government will properly fund the defence of the UK. It is nonsense and doublespeak.

The Conservatives have made Britain weak. Vote Labour on June 8.

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