Boris Backs Corbyn Shock

While the creative interpretation of comments made by veteran left-winger Jeremy Corbyn continues - and the context of what he said becomes clear - it seems the position he outlined on that TV show back in 2011, that Osama bin Laden should have been put on trial, and that his killing made the world a less and not more safe place, has an unexpected ally in London’s increasingly occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

Indeed, Bozza set out exactly the position suggested by Corbyn, and he did so as early as December 2001, in what was then a guest column at the Telegraph, under the headline “Bin Laden should die, but we must try him first”. Here is what he said.

“Bin Laden should be put on trial; not in Britain, but in the place where he organised the biggest and most terrible of his massacres, New York … He should be put on trial, because a trial would be the profoundest and most eloquent statement of the difference between our values and his. He wanted to kill as many innocent people as he could. We want justice”. And there was more.

“A trial would expose the cruelty and emptiness of the man, the muddle of his beliefs, the mushy-minded chippiness of his politics … Osama bin Laden is not a modern Socrates, a sage whose self-defence can be expected to shame his accusers and echo down the ages. He is both sinister and ludicrous at once, and a trial would expose that”. Ten years later, Bozza rethought his stance - but he did not totally repudiate his earlier effort.

After bin Laden was killed, Bozza, now a regular Telegraph columnist garnering £250,000 a year of “chicken feed” for his trouble, told “Let's be clear: Osama bin Laden was executed – and for good reason. Imagine the media circus if the Americans had put the al-Qaeda chief on trial in New York City”. So now he was not in favour of a trial, but did agree with Jezza that bin Laden had been executed.

Moreover, he concluded thus: “If America is to go around indulging in extra-judicial liquidation of anyone who poses a threat to American interests, then we are entitled to wonder where it will end. We may be worried that the enemies of America may be spurred to symmetrical retaliation and that we will be caught up in a cycle of killing and counter-killing”. That was exactly the line taken by Corbyn.

So where is the right-wing media disdain and ridicule? Bozza has echoed Corbyn’s assertion that bin Laden should have been put on trial, and even though he later retracted that, he echoed the view that the killing was an execution, and that there was concern this would make the world a more dangerous place. To no surprise at all, though, no assault on Bozza’s view has been made. Because he’s a Tory.

What this non-story has shown us is the sheer desperation of the right-leaning press - along with some supposed Labour supporters who should know better - to inflate any claim made about Jeremy Corbyn into some kind of lurid exposé. No surprise there.