Does anybody care that some former First Sea Lord might resign the Labour whip over Jeremy Corbyn’s views about nuclear weapons?
Who thinks Nigel Farage should have any kind of say over Mr Corbyn’s behaviour at the cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday?
What about The Sun, claiming Corbyn should have bowed more deeply after placing his wreath. What does an exaggerated piece of theatre have to do with respect for the dead?
It’s all rubbish, of course. Silly noises made by the chatterers to undermine someone they don’t like. Gossip.
Corbyn has a view on nuclear weapons, but we can see from his words about the Second World War that he has a view about fighting evil, too.
Perhaps – and I know it’s an unfashionable idea nowadays – it’s why he went into politics in the first place.
Lord West criticised the current chief of the defence staff, Gen Sir Nicholas Houghton, for comments he made on Sunday in which he said he was worried by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s statement that he would never use nuclear weapons.
West said: “We (military figures) tend to say things as we see rather than spinning them or being clever with our words.”
“He was trying to be careful but he got bluffed into saying a little bit more than he should have done.”
The peer said no action was needed against Houghton other than to advise him to “be careful”.
He claimed that Houghton had been naive in being walked into answering a question he should not have answered, but insisted the issue had been overblown.
Nigel Farage said Corbyn should have bowed more deeply at the Cenotaph on Remembrance Sunday.
The Sun newspaper also claimed Corbyn had insulted the war dead by failing to bow his head more deeply when he laid his wreath.
Corbyn turned up at the Cenotaph in a dark suit wearing a red poppy and stayed behind after the service to talk to former servicemen informally, rather than attending a formal lunch.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the paper’s former editor Charles Moore refused to join the criticism, saying: “There was nothing wrong with his slight bow, he wore unobjectionable clothes, a red poppy and a respectful expression.”
Corbyn’s views are close to pacifist, but he has defended the second world war as a fight against fascism.
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