Andy McSmith's Diary: The ongoing fight over whether Jeremy Corbyn is a pacifist

Corbyn's fame spreads across the pond as the Washington Post debates whether he is indeed a pacifist

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Jeremy Corbyn’s fame has spread so widely that the Washington Post has aired opposing views on whether he is a pacifist. The paper’s London bureau chief, Griff Witte, described him as “pacifism-inclined” but Michael Allen, who lives in Washington but was once active in the Labour Party in Corbyn’s Islington North constituency, wrote in to disagree. He said: “Corbyn has consistently expressed support for a wide range of armed struggles, from those of the anti-apartheid African National Congress and Nicaraguan Sandinistas to the more morally dubious political violence of the IRA, Hamas and Hezbollah.” Corbyn, by the way, says that he is not a pacifist.

Daily grind for Osborne

When David Cameron retires, and George Osborne’s leadership campaign team is ringing round for pledges of support, they can give that wayward Tory Nadine Dorries a miss. Asked on the BBC’s Daily Politics show about Osborne’s chances of succeeding to the Tory leadership, she said: “If that happens then I think what we need to do, really in all parties, is look at how our political system works, because I don’t think it’s right that anybody of privilege should be able to come into parliament and use their privilege and their education – their background – to secure their career progression into the role of Prime Minister.

“If George Osborne becomes Prime Minister that is how he has done it.”

Asked whether an Osborne succession would drive her out of the Conservative Party, she said she might “have this discussion another day”.

The fact that she was on the show at all may not be unconnected to the absence of its main presenter, Andrew Neil, who was thousands of miles away across the Atlantic. He thinks Dorries is quite mad, which is mild compared with what she has said about him.

Brown-nosing in US

Gordon Brown– remember him? – is better thought of abroad than at home. The New York Times noted that his decision this week to join the advisory board of a California investment management company, Pimco, was unusual because he is “quite a private man for a politician … (but) as expert as they come in terms of international economics”. The writer added: “Analysts have long thought that the ideal post-political job for him would be leading a global policy institution, like the International Monetary Fund.”

That is the very job which Brown might have had four years ago, if he had not been spitefully blocked by David Cameron, who did not want the world to acknowledge Brown’s economic expertise. It would have spoiled the Tory narrative that Britain’s economic problems are Labour’s fault.

The loneliness of a Lib Dem

I note from a Lib Dem press release that Catherine Bearder MEP has been designated leader of the party’s EU referendum campaign. That makes sense. She is the only Lib Dem still in the European Parliament.

Bark worse than bite

More than 40 years have passed since Aravindan Balakrishnan, the leader of a Maoist cult in south London, who awaits sentence after being convicted last week of rape and other offences, first made national news. In the early 1970s, he led his followers in a violent attempt to disrupt a meeting at the London School of Economics, where a hero of the right, the psychologist Hans Eysenck was speaking. One of the students who stood between the protesters and the speaker was bitten on the arm. You might think that being bitten by a member of that strange outfit would have turned the victim into a howling Maoist. Actually, his name is Rex Osborn, and he is the sensible leader of the Labour group on Wandsworth council.