Cameron says Labour under Corbyn threat to UK security
AFP
AFP, LONDON: Prime Minister David Cameron said Sunday that veteran socialist Jeremy Corbyns election to the Labour leadership made the main opposition party a threat to Britains national security.
The Labour Party is now a threat to our national security, our economic security and your familys security, he said on his personal Twitter account, in his first response to Corbyns victory on Saturday.
The Conservative leaders comments mirror those made by Defence Secretary Michael Fallon on Saturday, and by the centre-right party itself. Corbyn, a co-founder of the Stop the War anti-war movement, advocates unilateral nuclear disarmament, ending austerity and increasing public spending.
Camerons Downing Street office issued a one-sentence statement Saturday on Corbyns victory.
The prime minister has spoken to Jeremy Corbyn, on the phone, to congratulate him on becoming the new leader of the opposition, it said.
Cameron will face Corbyn in parliament on Wednesday in the House of Commons showpiece weekly session. The main opposition leader gets to fire six questions at the prime minister.
Meanwhile, anti-austerity leftwinger Jeremy Corbyns emphatic win to become leader of Britains opposition Labour could divide the partys MPs but boost its grassroots power, commentators said Sunday.
The veteran socialists victory with 59.5 percent of the vote also marks a break with the legacy of controversial former prime minister Tony Blair and his centrist New Labour movement of the 1990s.
Death of New Labour, read a front-page headline in The Sunday Telegraph newspaper.
Labour isnt dead, Blairism is. Jeremy Corbyn finally killed it, the pro-Conservative weekly said, adding that Corbyn had defeated boring Blairites.
Red and Buried crowed a headline in the right-wing Mail on Sunday but the socialist Morning Star daily hailed the result saying: Jeremy Storms to Victory.
The paper noted that Corbyn had achieved a better result than Blair, who won the Labour leadership in 1994 with 57 percent. Guardian columnist Rafael Behr said Blairism was buried beneath the rubble and a different structural and cultural divide has been revealed.
It is between established Labour... and insurgent Labour, a complex hybrid of organised coup by dogged old warriors of the left and spontaneous, organic uprising by idealistic new recruits.
In a sign of the change of style, Corbyn asked supporters to send in questions to ask David Cameron at Wednesdays weekly prime ministers question session in parliament.
