Corbyn didn’t know Czech diplomat was a spy. Pull the other one, comrade!

The scoop in The Sun this week about Jeremy Corbyn’s discussions with a Czech spy during the Cold War was a belter. Corbyn met Ján Dymic – real name understood to be Ján Sarkocy, of the Czechoslovak foreign ministry, in charge of the “peace movement” in 1986 in London on several occasions.

The dismissive response of Corbyn supporters online was predictable, although the vehemence suggested a chord had been struck as though Corbynites fear that voters might be starting to notice what Corbyn – plateaued in the polls – is really like.

Anyway, the older far lefties must know Corbyn was up to his neck in this stuff, playing nicey nice with the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. They rely on people thinking it was all a long time ago, and so what if Corbyn wanted the wrong side to win during the Cold War. In this school of thinking, the Soviets kind of had the right idea but it got a bit out of hand, what with all the murdering and interning citizens and banning dissent. In the swamp of Socialist new generation social media commentary there was a lot of shouting about smears when the Czech story landed, although the younger Corbynites weren’t around during the Cold War and may not pick up on the nuances of such a story.

Now, in a rather credulous report from Politico – Jeremy Corbyn never knowingly met communist spy, says Czech agency – we get the official response of the Corbyn Labour leadership and the Czechs. For anyone old enough to remember the Cold War, and all the euphemisms, it’s a hoot.

Politico reports: “Secret service archives show a meeting took place, but Labour leader considered it to be with a diplomat.”

To which the response must be: pull the other one, comrade!”

By the mid-1980s the pattern – “trade envoys” and “diplomats” on “peace missions” – was so well-established that an MP would have to be a complete idiot not to twig what was going on. (Is that the defence? Corbyn was an idiot? It can’t be.)

Honestly. When in 1986 a guy called Jan turns up from the Czech Foreign Ministry to talk about “the peace movement” and international relations it’s not hard to figure out. Even if Jan himself didn’t wear a t-shirt saying “I am a spy” he was a spy, or at the very least had to report his contacts in the West to other spies.

Corbyn was never the sharpest tool in the box, but he was versed in 1980s Cold War culture. Everyone living in Britain was back then. It was everywhere, with films, novels, and news stories about espionage and people not being what they pretended to be. He was prominent in CND, for goodness sake. He palled along with the Marxist IRA. He had been on holidays to Communist countries.

In the mid-1980s the outcome of the Cold War was not known or guaranteed. It was not clear yet that the Socialist economic model was about to collapse, and that US/NATO spending (hated by the Corbyn far left at the time) would within a few years lead to a triumph for the democracies. Back then, Corbyn’s hard left pals – Tony Benn for example – still talked of the need for the West to effectively surrender, and talked up the supposed advantages of  a Socialist command and control economy, which requires tyranny to enforce, it always does.

I keep being told this stuff doesn’t matter, just like the fact refugees are now fleeing ruined Venezuela, the country Corbyn used to praise as a beacon, a model society and economy, supposedly doesn’t matter either.

It does matter a great deal, and it is vital that it keeps being pointed out because it goes to the heart of questions about his judgement and character. When the liberal democracies of the West faced a totalitarian bloc that impoverished and suppressed its own citizens in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and the Soviet Union, Corbyn’s sympathies were with the Soviet Union and against the West. In the great struggle of the second half of the 20th century, Corbyn was on the wrong side. That’s quite something.