Corbyn Smear - Enter A Useful Idiot

More than one so-called historian has already seen their credibility extinguished by endorsing the fantasy claims made by a former Czech diplomat against not just Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, but other Labour figures. Dominic Sandbrook, now an asset of the Rothermere press, has made himself look even more foolish by backing the smears, as has the impeccably right-leaning Niall Ferguson.

Giles Udy. In a remainder bin near you very soon

And willingly joining them this weekend is one Giles Udy, whose research into the Soviet Gulags will have seen its value plummet as a result. Udy has been enthusiastically Retweeting CapX, the Spectator, Dan, Dan The Oratory Man, the odious flannelled fool Master Harry Cole, and Ross Kempsell of the Guido Fawkes blog - all on the Corbyn smears which have now well and truly unravelled. And it gets worse.

“Corbyn and Diane Abbott took a holiday together in the DDR. Given their admiration for the Communist dictatorship it is inconceivable that they did not meet party officials. Those meetings would have been extensively written up and now be in Stasi archives” he claims, on no evidence at all. Then he enthuses “thread thread thread thread” at the further smears dreamed up by Robert Colville of the CPS (which isn’t biased, honestly).

He tells of “A new account to follow”, this being a piss-poor parody pretending Corbyn is guilty as smeared, before returning to the allegedly serious stuff. “I doubt Corbyn did take money from Communist spies but others did: eg the 1970s trade union leader whose wife had been a Soviet spy since the 30s. One key Labour figure even met intelligence officers in the Soviet embassy to discuss taking Labour further Left” he muses solemnly.

But the Corbyn smears are a single and unreliable source. That does not deter Udy: “Corbyns [sic] behaviour was reprehensible but not unique. Labour ranks have included many deluded fans of Socialist totalitarianism over the years. The much derided Blair revolution nearly saw them off for good but his successors carelessly squandered that part of his legacy … Now they are back with a vengeance. For more see my article in the Sunday papers tomorrow. Details to follow”. Who had commissioned him? Have a guess.

Yes, it was the Telegraph, and after pausing long enough to endorse yet another of Jan Sarkocy’s flights of fancy, off he goes on the sales pitch. “My article in today's @Telegraph: Labour collusion with the Soviets has a long history - from the union leader taking KGB money to the Lab Gen Sec meeting intelligence officers in the Soviet Embassy to engineer a 'genuine Socialist govt' in the UK”. All of whom are now dead and therefore won’t sue.

Who is he fingering? “In the troubled 1970s union barons controlled Labour (& the country). Jack Jones, leader of the Transport and General Workers Union (Unite today) was one of the most powerful men in the country. He took Kremlin cash and his wife had been a Soviet agent since the 1930s … In other words, this has been going on a long time”. Yeah, right. Udy’s source is Oleg Gordievsky - the same source used by the Sunday Times to smear Michael Foot. That ended up in a whopping libel bill - as it wasn’t true.

His targets are dead, his sources discredited. Yet out there on the right, Giles Udy is feted for his insights into Labour and the Soviet Union. As they say in God’s Own County - on the basis of what he has shown here, I wouldn’t pay the silly bugger in washers.