In just 30 seconds, Corbyn nailed the Tories’ racist hypocrisy at PMQs

Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson
Support us and go ad-free

At Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on 12 February, Jeremy Corbyn shredded Boris Johnson’s racist hypocrisy.

After the government deported 17 people to Jamaica, Corbyn’s question was an absolute truth bomb.

“A young boy with blonde hair”

The deportations came despite widespread outrage and a series of successful legal challenges. Although the Court of Appeal ruled some were not legal and later rejected a Home Office appeal against its decision, by this stage too many people had already been placed on coaches and were denied phone contact with lawyers and relatives. As The Canary reported, the case has prompted new fears of another Windrush scenario, and many people feel it’s inherently racist and discriminatory against Black people. Yet the government refused to apologise.

Most of the so-called ‘Jamaica 50’ stood judged for past crimes and completed prison sentences. So Corbyn asked Johnson if he thought:

that someone who came to this country at the age of five… was the victim of county lines grooming and compelled to carry drugs, released five years ago and never reoffended, deserves to be deported?

Yet according to Johnson, it’s “entirely right that foreign national offenders should be deported from this country in accordance with the law”. As Corbyn rightly pointed out, the government has “learned absolutely nothing from the Windrush scandal”.

He also accused “this cruel and callous government” of “trying to mislead the British people into thinking it’s solely deporting foreign nationals who are guilty of murder, rape, and other very serious offences”. Although this is what the official government response to the deportations insisted, as Corbyn pointed out, it’s not true. Stories have since emerged that show many of those threatened with deportation didn’t commit “serious offences”.

Read on...

Support us and go ad-free

And then, Corbyn went for the jugular:

Johnson’s face as Corbyn spoke said it all:

There’s absolutely no doubt who that “young white boy with blonde hair” might be:

Spot on

Johnson was born in the US and, in 2008, he confessed to snorting cocaine and smoking “dope” as a teenager. Later, a secret recording showed Johnson telling his friend Darius Guppy that he’d pass on News of the World reporter Stuart Collier’s address. This was so Guppy could beat him up.

Corbyn was absolutely right to challenge both Johnson’s shady past and the vile racism of this Tory government. Respect.

Featured images via screengrab Ben Jolly/Twitter

Support us and go ad-free

We know everyone is suffering under the Tories - but the Canary is a vital weapon in our fight back, and we need your support

The Canary Workers’ Co-op knows life is hard. The Tories are waging a class war against us we’re all having to fight. But like trade unions and community organising, truly independent working-class media is a vital weapon in our armoury.

The Canary doesn’t have the budget of the corporate media. In fact, our income is over 1,000 times less than the Guardian’s. What we do have is a radical agenda that disrupts power and amplifies marginalised communities. But we can only do this with our readers’ support.

So please, help us continue to spread messages of resistance and hope. Even the smallest donation would mean the world to us.

Support us
  • Show Comments
    1. Pretty weak article when you look at the industrial anti semitism of the labour party. The labour party being investigated for human rights abuses, just like the BNP were. And Nick Griffin endorsed labour on that basis.

      1. The accusations of antisemitism have been whipped up by the Zionists, who are racists. Labour established the EHRC. Educate yourself. Start with The Holocaust Industry: Finkelstein. Then The Fateful Triangle: Chomsky. Then the whole of Ilan Pappe.

    2. Speaking of racist hypocrisy, the four stooges standing for the leadership of the Labour Party have agreed to support Zionist racism. Zionism is not Judaism. It is a political creed and racist to its core. This is Chaim Weizmann: “There is a qualitative difference between a Jew and an Arab”. Imagine the outrage at: “There is a qualitative differece between a white person and a black person.” And this is Theodore Herzl, the father of Zionism: “The Yid is a hideous distortion of the human character, something unspeakably low and repulsive…We’ll breathe more easily, having got rid once and for all, of these people who, with furtive shame, we were obliged to treat as our fellow tribesmen.” (Die Welt Oct 15th 1897). Zionism is not only racist towards the Palestinians (who Golda Meir said don’t exist) but it’s history of anti-semitism is well documented and uncontroversial. All four candidates have aligned themselves with this by agreeing to the ten pledges demanded by the British Board of Deputies which represents a minority of British Jews and is an apologist for Zionims and the Israeli State. Pledge 4 breaches Party rules by denying expelled members the right of re-entry, currently possible five years after expulsion; pledge 5 establishes guilt by association and threatens any member who associates with an expelled or suspended member with suspension or expulsion; pledge 6 makes criticism of Israel or of Zionism an offence; pledge 7 hands training in anti-racism to a body which accepts Zionism and refuses to criticise Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians; pledge 8 denies a voice to any Jewish organisation or individual other than those which are apologists for Zionism. You need the mentality of a slave to accept those. The racism of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians is a matter of historical record. The racism at the heart of Zionism is beyond controversy. What is the Labour Party doing prostrating itself before racists? Shimon Peres, agreeing with Begin, wrote this: “The past is immutable and the Bible is the decisive document in determining the fate of our land.” What that means is messianic entitlement and that means the Palestinians must either be wiped out or driven out. Golda Meir said: ” …the borders of Israel are where Jews live, not where there is a line on a map”. In other words, the entire globe is Israel. The Israel courts have determined that Israel is not the country of its citizens but “the Sovereign State of the Jewish people”. Supposing we were to speak of “the Sovereign State of the Christian people” Obvious tosh. The four candidates for Labour leader are fully signed up to the racism of the Zionists and are too pusillanimous to tell the truth: Israel is an apartheid State, Zionism is racist and both must be faced down.

    Leave a Reply

    Join the conversation

    Please read our comment moderation policy here.