Isn’t It Time Jeremy Corbyn Stepped Aside

Watching Ben Wallace’s statement on Iran today it became obvious that Labour will struggle while Jeremy Corbyn continues to speak for them.

In a sense it is understandable given that the media, for reasons best known unto itself, have got it into their collective heads that Donald Trump is planning to attack ‘cultural sites’. Labour haven’t the gumption to work out that what Ricky Gervais said about actors, also applies to an awful lot of journalists. So parroting what they say, which has been force-fed to them by partisan think tanks and lobbyists, just makes you look a little on the silly-side.

If you have read this far, I assume you speak, and comprehend, English. I want you hold onto that comprehension of English because the idea of bombing ‘cultural sites’ comes from this series of tweets from Mr Trump: and specifically the last tweet in the series…

“ ….targeted 52 Iranian sites (representing the 52 American hostages taken by Iran many years ago), some at a very high level & important to Iran & the Iranian culture, and those targets, and Iran itself, WILL BE HIT VERY FAST AND VERY HARD. The USA wants no more threats!”

Do you think he means the Ruins of Persepolis? Or the Grand Mosque at Isfahan? (as the Guardian would have you believe).

For instance when KPMG, writes an article for it’s blog called, The role of corporate culture in the fight against money laundering: do people assume that Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena is to be rubblelized? Or if someone said they were going to attack rape culture, or drug culture, or cultural appropriation culture, no one in their right-mind says, “OMG they are going to bomb Stonehenge.”

If you are a rational, in a way that journalists are not, the chances are you will think about this for two minutes, in a way that journalists do not, and conclude Mr Trump is talking about military, infrastructure, and commercial sites. You know, the things that you would attack if you were seeking to degrade (don’t you love military phraseology?)the militaristic theocratic culture of the Iranian state.

So when Mr Corbyn (who is hopelessly stuck in the loop of the media) stands up in Parliament and asks if the British government will support the Americans if they start attacking cultural sites. It is easy for Mr Wallace to pat the ball back across the despatch box with a simple no. Because they are not…no one but journalists and the hysterics who believe them, think they are…. with the caveat that they might attack Perspolis or the Mosque of Isfahan if either/or both had a some military bunker, or something similar, underneath it… but we will assume they don’t as they are both World Heritage sites and UNESCO might have mentioned it if they did.

Philip Kennicott (art and culture critic) in the Washington Post, has noticed the obvious error when ‘interpreting’ Trump’s tweet. But he decides make a twat of himself anyway with a piece entitled, The president didn’t threaten just Iran’s culture sites. He threatened culture.

“ When I read President Trump’s words, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out a volume I’ve owned since I was a boy, a history of world architecture, full of places that I still long to visit. And I wondered, what place will we hit first?”

I wonder which sites he will name?

“ Will my country lay waste to the great mosques and bridges of Isfahan and the remains of Persepolis?”

Well blow me… it’s almost like the Washington Post and the Guardian are laundering each other’s ‘news’. And besides it’s a bit rich for an art and culture critic to start blathering on about protecting a culture that bans music, cooperation with the British Council, instagram, pilgrimages, the teaching of English, pokemon, books, zumba dancing classes… to name but the first things the search ‘Iran bans’ turns up. And of course they jail poets.

But back to Mr Corbyn. Another of his ‘attacks’ was that Boris Johnson did not make the statement on Iran, but sent the Defence Secretary Mr Wallace instead. This according to Mr Corbyn was proof (proof I tells you) that Mr Johnson is not taking the Iran Crisis seriously.

And again Mr Wallace batted the ball back across the despatch box with ease because the point is so utterly irrelevant. For one thing, Dominic Cummings’ big brain idea is that ministers should be more responsible for their department. And, it doesn’t take a genius to work out that Mr Johnson not appearing in the Commons to make a statement is a sign the ‘Crisis’ — everything is a Crisis in the clickbait media these days — may not be so urgent as the media would have us believe.

We are someway from Mr Trump being flayed, stuffed and used as Hassan Rohani’s footstool.

But none of this is going to stop Mr Corbyn.

Having stood up in parliament to demand answers to questions that don’t need asking. He left the Commons and went to the studio’s of Sky News to answer questions he refuses to answer. The transcript of the interview if a masterpiece of circumlocution.

Surely someone in the Labour party can see this isn’t helping them?

Particularly as if you listen to the whole debate MPs, on all sides, were raising legitimate and interesting questions. Like what happens to the ISIS prisoners being held in Kurdish prisons if as a result of the vote in the Iraqi parliament coalition forces withdraw.

You know, the sort of thing journalists should be writing about… instead of just making any old shit up for baggage-laden daft old men to repeat.