| ||
|---|---|---|
Backbencher Leader of the Opposition and Labour Party
Elections Cultural depictions
 | ||
Dangerous Hero: Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power is a 2019 biography of British Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn written by British conservative writer, investigative journalist and biographer Tom Bower. It is an unfriendly portrait of Corbyn. [1] [2]
Peter Oborne of Middle East Eye wrote the "new book on Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn, contains numerous falsehoods. It systematically omits relevant facts" and that "Again and again he [the author] withholds relevant information". [3] Stephen Bush of The Guardian criticised the book as a "hatchet job, it is a dismal failure" and said it committed "rudimentary errors". [4] A Labour Party spokesman stated it was "poorly researched and tawdry hatchet job... packed with obvious falsehoods and laughable claims." [5] The Times called it "a bit of a bore". [6] Matthew Norman of The Independent stated, "The only 'dirt' investigative journalist Tom Bower managed to dig up was the Labour leader's domestic amnesia and proneness to debt through helping those in need" and that the book "appears to contain a fatal paradox: on the one hand, as hinted by the subtitle Corbyn's Ruthless Plot for Power, [Corbyn] has plotted ruthlessly for power; on the other, the author reports that Corbyn was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire to keep bees". [7] VICE News stated that the book is "garbage" and full of factual errors. [8]
According to journalist Gaby Hinsliff, who described the book as flawed, there is little that was new in the book because "We all know by now about the meetings with Holocaust deniers and perpetrators of blood libel, the somersaults turned to avoid blaming the Kremlin for the Salisbury poisonings, the long history of antipathy to the EU." [9] The most "telling criticism," in Hinsliff's view, was that "Corbyn is simply not very bright... His backbench career was long on expressing passionate solidarity with causes but short on concrete achievements, and he comes across as prone to ducking arguments that he lacks the skill to win." She argued that the book's greatest flaw is Bower's eagerness to condemn its subject, but concludes that Dangerous Hero, "is the most compelling in-depth study so far of a man whose head is unusually difficult to get inside, given his suspicion of anyone who isn’t a fellow traveller." [9] Ex-Labour MP Tom Harris wrote that the book is a "meticulous and highly readable account", that "stands as an indictment of both the Labour Party and a political system that allows an individual such as Jeremy Corbyn to come within shouting distance of the levers of power in the UK". [2] A reviewer for The Times wrote that according to the book, the October 1968 Rodney riots in Kingston, Jamaica convinced Corbyn to become a Trotskyist with the goal of turning Britain into a communist state. [10]
In June 2020, it was announced that Associated Newspapers, the publishers of The Mail on Sunday and MailOnline, paid substantial damages and costs over a "grotesque" libel made against a non-profit Palestinian refugee group in its serialisation of the book. Lawyers for the plaintiff, the Palestinian Return Centre, said: "Neither Mr Bower, the Mail nor HarperCollins (the publisher of the book) saw fit to properly verify the true position, nor to put the allegation to the PRC prior to publication." The news outlets have also published a correction and apology. HarperCollins and Bower had already withdrawn the allegation, explaining that the author had relied on a contemporaneous newspaper report of the incident that had not been amended or corrected. [11]
Jeremy Bernard Corbyn is a British politician who served as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2020. On the political left of the Labour Party, Corbyn describes himself as a socialist. He has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Islington North since 1983. Corbyn sits in the House of Commons as an independent, having had the whip removed in October 2020.
Peter Alan Oborne is a British journalist and broadcaster. He is the former chief political commentator of The Daily Telegraph, from which he resigned in early 2015. He is author of The Rise of Political Lying, The Triumph of the Political Class, and The Assault on Truth: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Emergence of a New Moral Barbarism, and along with Frances Weaver of the pamphlet Guilty Men. He writes a political column for Middle East Eye and a diary column for the Byline Times.
Thomas Michael Bower is a British writer and former BBC journalist and television producer. He is known for his investigative journalism and for his unauthorised biographies, often of business tycoons and newspaper proprietors.
Dylan John Jones OBE is an English journalist and author. He served as editor of the UK version of men's fashion and lifestyle magazine GQ from 1999 to 2021. He has held senior roles with several other publications, including editor of magazines i-D and Arena, and has contributed weekly columns to newspapers The Independent and The Mail on Sunday. Jones has penned multiple books.
Rufus Hound is an English actor, comedian and presenter.
John Ware is a British journalist, author, and investigative reporter.
Lisa Eva Nandy is a British politician serving as Shadow Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities since 2021. A member of the Labour Party, she has been Member of Parliament (MP) for Wigan since 2010.
Alex Nunns is a British author, editor and political activist.
The Stop the War Coalition (StWC), informally known simply as Stop the War, is a British group established on 21 September 2001, shortly after the September 11 attacks, to campaign against what it believes are unjust wars.
Richard Burgon is a British Labour Party politician who has been the Member of Parliament (MP) for Leeds East since 2015. Burgon served as Shadow Secretary of State for Justice and Shadow Lord Chancellor in the Shadow Cabinet of Jeremy Corbyn from 2016 to 2020.
Jessica Rose Phillips is a British politician serving as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Birmingham Yardley since 2015. A member of the Labour Party, she has been Shadow Minister for Domestic Violence and Safeguarding in Keir Starmer's Opposition frontbench since 2020.
Comrade Corbyn: A Very Unlikely Coup is a 2016 book by British journalist Rosa Prince, published by Biteback Publishing. It is an unauthorised biography of Jeremy Corbyn, who was the Leader of the Opposition in the United Kingdom from 2015 to 2020.
Richard Leonard is a British politician who served as Leader of the Scottish Labour Party from 2017 to 2021. He has been a Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP), as one of the additional members for the Central Scotland region, since 2016. He ideologically identifies as a socialist, democrat and internationalist.
The 2016 Labour Party leadership election was called when a challenge to Jeremy Corbyn as Leader of the Labour Party arose following criticism of his approach to the Remain campaign in the referendum on membership of the European Union and questions about his leadership of the party.
Marc Wadsworth is a British black rights campaigner, broadcast and print journalist and BBC filmmaker. He founded the Anti-Racist Alliance in 1991 and helped set up the justice campaign for murdered black teenager Stephen Lawrence two years later. Wadsworth launched an early citizen-journalism news portal, The-Latest.com. In 2008 Wadsworth's reporting triggered the resignation of Mayor of London Boris Johnson's spokesman.
Allegations of antisemitism in the Labour Party of the United Kingdom (UK) have been made since Jeremy Corbyn was elected as leader of the party in September 2015. After comments by Naz Shah in 2014 and Ken Livingstone in 2016 resulted in their suspension from membership pending investigation, Corbyn established the Chakrabarti Inquiry, which concluded that the party was not "overrun by anti-Semitism or other forms of racism", although there was an "occasionally toxic atmosphere" and "clear evidence of ignorant attitudes". The Home Affairs Select Committee of Parliament held an inquiry into antisemitism in the UK in the same year and found "no reliable, empirical evidence to support the notion that there is a higher prevalence of antisemitic attitudes within the Labour Party than any other political party", though the leadership's lack of action "risks lending force to allegations that elements of the Labour movement are institutionally antisemitic".
Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL) is an organisation formed in 2017 for Jewish members of the UK Labour Party. Its aims include a commitment "to strengthen the party in its opposition to all forms of racism, including anti-Semitism... to uphold the right of supporters of justice for Palestinians to engage in solidarity activities" and "to oppose attempts to widen the definition of antisemitism beyond its meaning of hostility towards, or discrimination against, Jews as Jews".
The Skwawkbox is a left-wing news site based in the United Kingdom, founded in 2012 by Steve Walker.
The Corbyn wreath-laying controversy refers to a political controversy in the United Kingdom surrounding the visit of Jeremy Corbyn to the Hamman Chott Cemetery in Tunis in 2014.
The Starmer Project: A Journey to the Right is a 2022 book by British journalist Oliver Eagleton, published by Verso Books. It is a political biography of British opposition and Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and follows his time in the Crown Prosecution Service and Shadow Cabinet of his predecessor Jeremy Corbyn, covering his political alliances, election as party leader and subsequent leadership of the Labour Party.
