Jeremy Corbyn has said nuclear weapons “didn’t do the U.S. much good on 9/11” as a row over Trident engulfs his shadow cabinet.
Advertisement
This morning, Mr Corbyn told me explicitly, indeed with a few irritation, that there was no way that he would ever use nuclear weapons because they are “immoral”.
He said: “Under my leadership there will be no question about who is in charge of the Scottish Labour Party”.
Speaking in advance of his visit, he said: “Too many people have told me that they think the Labour Party lost its way”.
It comes after the newly-installed Labour leader made his first speech during his party’s conference in Brighton yesterday afternoon.
Asked by BBC TV on Wednesday whether there were any circumstances under which he would use the weapon if he became prime minister, Corbyn said: “No”.
Mr Corbyn also repeated his view that a political solution was needed in Syria because “you don’t solve every problem necessarily by going in and bombing”. The logic of this great revival of party democracy is that if the party decides it will do something, the leader must submit to it. And therefore if the Labour party decides it is committed to renewing Trident, then the leader must submit to that.
‘Protecting our island shores has to be absolutely paramount in the world that we live in today.
His chances of winning a consensus in parliament looked in jeopardy after Labour elected anti-war campaigner Jeremy Corbyn as leader this month.
Mr Johnson said: “It is particularly concerning that Jeremy Corbyn used his maiden speech to the Labour Party Conference to launch an attack on selective schools”.
Appearing without a tie on Sky News, Mr Corbyn continued: “I like to appear as comfortably as I possibly can and I am comfortable like this”.
The party leader did not mention immigration in his conference speech on Tuesday but Andy Burnham, his shadow home secretary, will later call for tighter European Union “freedom of movement” rules.
Although following the near wipe-out of Scottish Labour MPs at the General Election, there is now only one, Ian Murray, at Westminster, introducing a Scottish whip controlled from Holyrood would be an attempt to underscore the autonomous nature of Scottish Labour.
Describing Mr Corbyn’s stance, she said: “What we can certainly say about Jeremy is he’s very, very focused on democracy…”
Advertisement
And he left no doubt he would scrap the system, saying: “I don’t believe that £100 billion spent on a new generation of nuclear weapons taking up a quarter of our defence budget is the right way forward. We will force people like Starbucks, Vodafone, Amazon and Google and all the others to pay their fair share of taxes”, he said to loud applause, as Reuters reported.
