“For the next three hours I urge members to just focus on Syria,” the Labour MP Alison McGovern asked of her colleagues at the start of Monday’s debate, after the UK joined in airstrikes on Syria. “They deserve that.” It was no surprise to veteran Syria watchers that the leader of her party, Jeremy Corbyn, responded to this simple request by spending a quarter of his speech talking about Yemen.
Corbyn’s frequent calls for diplomacy over the conflict in Syria sound reasonable, and certainly have the support of many voters. Yet the Labour leader often treats Russia as a good-faith actor in the conflict, even as it pumps out propaganda in support of the Assad regime. Corbyn’s executive director of strategy and communications, Seumas Milne, meanwhile, has a reputation for being, in his former life as a journalist, sympathetic to Russia. More recently, he is said to have suggested that Russia’s involvement had stabilised the region.
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