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Populists from Britain’s Left and Right are set to do battle as former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn today announced his intention to take legal action against former Ukip head Nigel Farage. Writing on X, the Islington North MP cited “a highly defamatory statement about me” made on air by the now-GB News host last week.
I have asked my lawyers to take the first steps in commencing legal proceedings against Nigel Farage, following a highly defamatory statement about me.
We are a movement for peace — and we cannot stand by and let these disgusting and malicious lies go unchallenged.
— Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn) March 4, 2024
His spokesperson added that Farage had accused him of “subscribing to an antisemitic conspiracy theory”, namely that “Jews run the world”. In 2019, when he was still Leader of the Opposition, Corbyn was criticised for writing the forward to an edition of J.A. Hobson’s Imperialism: A Study, a book which claims that finance in Europe was controlled “by men of a single and peculiar race”. He denied any backing for the author’s statements about Jewish people.
Corbyn has already won in court against a rival politician, after Tory MP Ben Bradley had to apologise for accusing the Labour leader of selling British secrets to Soviet spies. Farage should be careful: what the magic grandpa lacks in electoral nous is clearly made up for by past legal success.
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