#NewLabour political adviser comparing #BorisJohnson to #JeremyCorbyn has it arse-backwards
Two reasons Boris Johnson isn’t anything like Jeremy Corbyn. Ayesha Hazarika seems unaware.
Why do newspapers give people like Ayesha Hazarika column space? Why do TV stations give her air time?
The only reason I can see is that she represents their own warped political views.
She’s certainly got it arse-backwards, comparing Boris Johnson with Jeremy Corbyn on the basis that they both attracted “cults”:
I have many Tory friends and colleagues who are mortified by what is happening to their party because of the cult of one man. I know how they feel because that’s what happened to Labour under Jeremy Corbyn. It was an awful time, but good people within the party, from MPs to grassroots activists, took a stand by speaking out. Many decent One Nation Conservatives, from Dominic Grieve to Rory Stewart and Anna Soubry, were kicked out of the party because of Brexit, but also because they could see what lay ahead.
This is not about Brexit or ideology – politics should be a contest of ideas. It’s about decency, honour, integrity and trust at the highest levels of British politics. That is something we should all care about. For all those Tory MPs who rightly encouraged and praised Labour MPs who spoke out against the Corbyn regime, it’s time to have a long hard look in the mirror.
There is no similarity between Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn.
The only – tenuous – connection between them is that Mr Corbyn was cut out of the Labour Party by a grubby political opportunist (Keir Starmer) while Johnson is a grubby political opportunist.
Come to that, I could say that Hazarika herself is a grubby political opportunist. When Mr Corbyn’s Labour came close to winning the general election in 2017 – despite (alleged) attempts at sabotage by people of Ms Hazarika’s own political views within the party – she said “I got it wrong on Corbyn”, and urged “my fellow Labour colleagues to acknowledge Corbyn’s success and to try to find peace with him”.
Contrast that with her behaviour before and after and it all seems two-faced.
Sadly, she’s not the only one mouthing these counterfactual comparisons in an attempt to use Johnson’s scandals to attack their real enemy.
Since much of the manufactured anger about Jeremy Corbyn was based on claims he was an anti-Semite, I’ll pass his defence on to one of his many Jewish supporters:
When you lose your moral compass up your own tukhes. Hazarika compares the most honest, anti racist, human rights advocate in Plt with lying, racist, elitist Johnson. She knew exactly what Johnson was about when she joined the establishment’s cynical all-out war on Jeremy Corbyn. https://t.co/TMj2v25fMT
— David Rosenberg (@davidjrosenberg) December 10, 2021
People like Ms Hazarika get away with publishing tripe like this because people like us are content to sit and read it, complain about it to whoever is near at the time, and then sling the paper in the bin (or close the link if we’re reading it online).
What we should do is complain.
Sadly, while the iNews page containing Ms Hazarika’s screed does have a “Contact Us” link, you can never reach it because if you try to scroll down to it, new images and links are added. That’s a bit sneaky, don’t you think?
Fortunately, I can provide the email address for you. It’s [email protected]. Just drop the editor a line saying how poor you think Ms Hazarika’s article was; that her choice of comparison was bad and that she failed to provide a single example of wrongdoing by Mr Corbyn. That should be enough.
There’s too much armchair politicking. Let’s put the cat among the pigeons.
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Just sent this to iNews:
To the Editor:
I am writing to register a serious complaint about Ayesha Hazarika’s article ‘Decent Tory MPs must take a stand against Boris Johnson, just as Labour did with Jeremy Corbyn’. The sub-headline “This is not about ideology – it’s about honour, integrity and trust at the highest levels of politics” is utterly sickening, illustrating prejudice of the highest order worthy of the lowest regard.
Whatever their political stance, any fair-minded clear-thinking person – among whom I would emphatically NOT class Ayesha Hazarika! – would have to admit that Corbyn’s honour, integrity and trustworthiness, not to mention general decency and kindliness, are pretty much beyond question – not merely by comparison with a large number of his fellow MPs on both sides of the House (notably the deplorable current ‘Prime Minister’) but also in absolute terms.
I am definitely NOT a ‘Corbynista’, but all I have read and heard in the last few years leads me to believe that he is a fair man: a conscientious constituency MP who has voted with his conscience at all times – even if it involves defying the ‘Party Whip’ (which institution is, I feel, in itself an appalling denial of democracy). Corbyn is on the left of the party, to be sure – especially in view of the apparent attachment of many of its MPs and apparatchiks to the corporate world and its financial benefits – but by comparison with the Labour Party of the not-too-distant past, and with the mainstream left in Europe he’s a moderate.
If any type of article necessitates the opportunity to comment it is a contentious article like this one; I see no such opportunity is offered here. This is simply a travesty of common justice. It makes a nonsense of any claim your publication might make to be an objective newspaper.
James Fussell