NS#257: Corbyn and the Spy
The New Statesman | UK politics and culture
The New Statesman
4.4 • 1.4K Ratings
🗓️ 22 February 2018
⏱️ 31 minutes
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Summary
Stephen and Anoosh discuss the story of Jeremy Corbyn's alleged meeting with a Czech spy in the 1980s and why it has received so much coverage. Then, they analyse the Labour leader's response, including his pledges to crack down on the right wing press and tax exile media moguls. Finally, they answer a listener question: why does Boris Johnson think he is the person to unite Leavers and Remainers?
Send us your questions for future episodes via Twitter @ns_podcasts, @anoosh_c or @stephenkb.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | May I have your attention please you can now book your train tickets on Uber and get |
| 0:08.0 | 10% back in credits to spend on your next Uber ride so you don't have to walk home in the brain again. |
| 0:16.5 | Trains now on Uber. Tees and sees apply. Check the Uber app. I'm David |
| 0:20.8 | Aruhovich. Listen to my new series from Tortoise, Eight Years Hard Labour. |
| 0:25.9 | It tells the extraordinary story of the double revolution that engulfed the Labour Party after 2015, |
| 0:31.6 | from centre left to hard left and back again, the battles and |
| 0:35.7 | disasters that accompanied them and the two men who led those revolutions, |
| 0:39.7 | Jeremy Corbyn and Kiea. |
| 1:18.4 | Listen to eight years hard labour wherever you get your podcasts. The Hello everyone so much to my surprise the dominant story in Westminster this week is the Jeremy Corbyn spy |
| 1:23.6 | story. I mean it's a story with with the question of the end because it is exactly. I mean, it's a nib, isn't it? It's a news in brief. |
| 1:28.6 | That thing is, it's like the original sun story is a good like if it's August and there's no news. It's a good funnel. We went into an archive and this guy under diplomatic cover talked to Corbin a couple of times and discovered literally nothing of interest, right? |
| 1:47.2 | It's a fun nip as you say. |
| 1:49.3 | Yeah, and politicians throughout history have always met with diplomats and people they probably didn't know they were in a secret service or anything like that so it's not really that surprising and you could probably find lots of politicians who had had these kind of conversations with |
| 2:03.7 | undercover agents not knowing that they were undercover agents throughout history. |
| 2:07.6 | Yeah, I also think you can you can even go further than that, right? |
| 2:10.4 | Then we know that throughout Western Europe, the Eastern Bloc's intelligence agencies |
| 2:16.6 | tried to cultivate links across domestic legislatures in Western Europe, |
| 2:21.0 | but particularly in the left most bit of the social democratic party because they were making things |
| 2:25.8 | the most difficult for their yeah they hoped then they would be ideologically |
| 2:30.2 | sympathetic or would be useful in the event of political upheaval. |
| 2:34.0 | In some ways I think some of the kind of reaction to this story is like the weird mirror |
| 2:38.5 | image of when Len McCluskey went the security services may be spying on Corbin and people went gosh what a crank and |
... |
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