Jeremy Corbyn is a political activist in the sense that no other modern Labour Party leader has been. Elected National Chair of the Stop the War Coalition in 2001, Corbyn has a long and distinguished history in advocacy for the Palestinian cause. While the British left is well informed and experienced in understanding conflict in the Middle East, the conflict in Ukraine sadly demonstrates a rather different approach to the post-Soviet space, with the primacy of 'NATO encirclement' overriding any appreciation of local dynamics.
At the same time, there has been an increasingly angry – at times, hysterical – discussion of Corbyn’s views vis-à-vis Russia and Ukraine, with accusations of 'useful idiocy', pandering and myopia with regards to the west’s relationship with Putin. Corbyn's factual inaccuracies on the Ukraine crisis – and they are numerous – testify more to ignorance than apologetics.
With recent declarations by leading figures such as Michael Fallon that Labour now represents a 'security threat to you and your family’, Corbyn may now face a media onslaught of truly staggering proportions, and allegations of ties to Russia will play a part.
