Embarrassing: UK Conservative Slams Speech He Later Learns Was Made By Member of His Own Party
Following the terrorist attack in Manchester, England that killed 22 people earlier this week, campaigning for the already underway UK general election was put on hold as a truce was called between the two major parties.
That brief electioneering lull ended today.
In a barnstorming indictment of UK foreign policy, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn linked the apparent failure of the Global War on Terror to increased incidents of jihadist violence at home and diminished security around the world.
The UK public overwhelmingly agreed with Corbyn’s diagnosis and his party has seen a stunning and unexpected wellspring of support in recent days.
Perhaps fearful of their eroding polling numbers and certainly shocked by the acceptance of Corbyn’s somewhat dovish argument, the Conservative government and Tory media figures pulled out all the stops and issued a series of withering attacks on the Labour leader’s approach to issues of war and peace.
UK Defense Secretary Michael Fallon was one such attacker, taking to Channel 4 News to call the ideas in Corbyn’s speech “muddled”. He said:
“The idea that the attack in Manchester could be traced back to British foreign policy–that it’s somehow somebody else’s fault, it’s the fault of the British government or somebody else…that’s the implication of the speech. Because he talks about foreign interventions and he implies that somehow this attack can be explained away on the basis of previous foreign interventions by success governments. And that’s wrong.”
Host Krishnan Guru-Murthy took slight issue with that characterization of Corbyn’s argument before reading back the following quote:
“Isn’t it possible that things like the Iraq War did not create the problem of murderous Islamic fundamentalists, but the war has unquestionably sharpened the resentments felt by such people in this country and given them a new pretext.”
Fallon then attacked that statement before Guru-Murthy revealed it was in fact a quote from current Conservative Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson.
The Tory Defense Secretary was briefly left speechless before backpedaling and attempting to reconcile the competing things he’d just said.
Whoops.
For more, see the full interview, via Channel 4 News above.
[image via screengrab]
