Theresa May rises to Russia challenge as Jeremy Corbyn falls in line with Kremlin
Backing Britain
THERESA May has risen to the Russia crisis as we hoped and as a Prime Minister must.
It is a national embarrassment that the opposition have failed so shamefully to do the same.
The PM has expelled 23 spies, ordered a crackdown on pro-Putin oligarchs and barred our officials, politicians or Royals from the World Cup.
Assets will be frozen. Russian gangsters’ days of running amok in London will end.
Some argue that’s not enough. But it’s just a start. Further action already under way cannot be made public. And Mrs May has given herself room for harsher measures to counter the inevitable Russian response.
Faced with a chemical weapons atrocity on our soil, she was decisive and resolute.
A blameless Russia would have given heartfelt assurances and a credible explanation of how their nerve agent came to be used and why they even possessed it. Instead, as Mrs May said, they reacted with “sarcasm and contempt”.
But Jeremy Corbyn, instructed by his Trotskyite aide Seumas Milne, sickeningly parroted the Kremlin line.
He backed Putin’s risible lies over our own scientists. He wanted more proof. He wanted Moscow to test the nerve agent, as it asked. He idiotically pointed his finger at “Foreign Office cuts”.
Maybe, just maybe, yesterday spelled the beginning of the end of this rancid incarnation of the Labour Party.
Here was its leader, the puppet of vile apologists for the old Soviet Union and Russia’s modern thugocracy, excusing Putin while a supportive MP sat behind him clutching a communist newspaper.
This is not one of his ancient treacheries, like backing the IRA. Right now, in real time, voters young and old can see him side with a hostile power against Britain. Imagine Corbyn in No10, refusing to act, defending Putin.
But it is no good Labour “moderates” pleading that he doesn’t speak for them. His position is their party’s. How can they stay on Corbyn’s benches? Or honestly campaign for him to take power?
They already knew he would destroy the economy. Now they see their leader standing up for a gangster regime that sends assassins to Britain.
They are swimming in Corbyn’s sewer. What remains of their self-respect?
Every day they shore him up they betray their own values and Britain’s.
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It’s time, gents
WHAT a devastating blow to lose, in one day, two great men of numbers.
First Stephen Hawking, the maths genius behind S=πAkc3/2hG. Then Jim Bowen, favourite statistic 180.
One asked, and had the answers to, crucial questions about our universe. So did the other, in A Brief History Of Time.
We salute Prof Hawking for the many incredible, historic insights and the courageous, epic resilience to his condition.
And Jim, too, for years of Bullseye fun.
Rest in peace, both.