UK to investigate state-funded attack on Corbyn

UK Foreign Office Minister Alan Duncan has authorized a probe into allegations that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was targeted in a propaganda attack funded by the government.

According to a report by the Sunday Mail, leaked documents show that the Scottish-based Institute for Statecraft, which had received hundreds of thousands of pounds in Foreign Office money to fight online “Russian propaganda,” also promoted tweets calling the Labour leader a “useful idiot” for Moscow.

Speaking on BBC, Duncan said he ordered the investigation immediately after learning about the allegations over the weekend.

“I don’t know the facts but if there is any kind of organization for which we are paying which is involved in domestic politics in that way, I would totally condemn it, and I have already over the weekend asked for a report to be on my desk by 10 o’clock this morning to say if there is any such activity,” he said Monday.

The minister said he wanted Statecraft to stop its anti-Labour attacks. “Not only must it stop, I want to know why on earth it happened in the first place.”

In late November, Parliament asked Duncan about Foreign Office’s funding of the Institute for Statecraft’s Integrity Initiative.

The FM’s response revealed that the “charitable” organization had received £296,500 in the 2017-18 financial year and was expected to rise to £1,961,000 this year.

The so-called Integrity Initiative is supposed to counter disinformation on social media by hiring “clusters” of journalists and online activists across Europe.

However, the Institute for Statecraft’s official Twitter account repeatedly retweeted anti-Corbyn posts.

One of the tweets called Corbyn a useful idiot and stated: “His open visceral anti-westernism helped the Kremlin cause, as surely as if he had been secretly peddling Westminster tittle-tattle for money.”

Similar messages targeted other top members of Labour such as Seumas Milne, Corbyn’s top aide. A message retweeted by the Institute for Statecraft had links to a newspaper report that said: “Milne is not a spy – that would be beneath him. But what he has done, wittingly or unwittingly, is work with the Kremlin agenda.”

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The organization has denied that the anti-Corbyn tweets were published on purpose.

“I’m not the one who controls the Twitter account,” said spokesman Stephen Dalziel. “If it was criticism of one of our politicians, then that shouldn’t be on there.”

This is not the first time that Corbyn comes under attack from outlets close to the government .The BBC has also been accused by Labour supporters of bias in their coverage of the Labour Party and its leader.

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