Jeremy Corbyn under fire from Salisbury council leader after ‘private’ visit in wake of Novichok attack
4 min read
Jeremy Corbyn has come under fire from the leader of Salisbury council for making a ‘private visit’ to the town following the Novichok nerve agent attack.
The leader of Salisbury city council, Matthew Dean, said he was “very surprised” to hear that Mr Corbyn had conducted a private visit to the city in the wake of the poisonings in the town.
The Labour leader yesterday revealed that he had been to the area after two Russian intelligence agents carried out the attack that saw former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia hospitalised on British soil earlier this year.
A later poisoning by the same nerve agent caused the death for 44-year-old Dawn Sturgess and left her partner Charlie Rowley fighting for his life.
Mr Dean, the Tory council chief, slammed the Labour leader for the private visit, saying that Mr Corbyn’s office had made no contact at all with the city council.
“If he did visit, I’m sad that we didn’t have the opportunity to explain what we’ve been doing to recover from this terrible incident”, he said.
“We would have liked the opportunity for our officer to have briefed him and possibly to have arranged for him to meet residents, businesses and agencies involved. As the leader of the opposition I would have liked him to come.”
A Labour source said that Mr Corbyn had stayed the night in the city on the 21st of July and that he had “met local people and listened to them speak about how the town had been affected by the awful attack”.
'APPALLED'
But Salisbury MP John Glen said that he was “surprised” that the Labour leader had not made an official trip. The Tory backbencher told the MailOnline: “Jeremy Corbyn can go wherever he likes privately, obviously, but I was surprised he did not make it known and to perhaps meet some of the people of this community.”
And he attacked Mr Corbyn for refusing to lay blame for the nerve agent poisonings on Russia despite significant new evidence laid out by the Prime Minister and security services.
In a statement to MPs, the Labour leader condemned the attacks, and said the "use of military nerve agents on the streets of Britain" was "an outrage and beyond reckless".
He added: "We utterly condemn the appalling attacks, we commend the police and security services for their diligence in investigating this appalling crime, and we will support any reasonable action to bring those responsible to justice, and to take further action against Russia for its failure to cooperate with this investigation."
But Mr Glen said that he believed his constituents would be “appalled” by the response.
“I think my constituents will be appalled that he finds it beyond himself to condemn the Russian state given the evidence that has been presented”, he said.
“How he cannot understand that the Russian state itself is responsible for what happened is beyond me and it’s beyond the understanding of most of the people in this country.
“It is stubborn adherence to a fixed view of Russia which is grounded in a romanticised notion of Russia rather than the reality of the state it is today.”
'WEASELLY LANGUAGE'
Meanwhile, former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson hit out at the remarks, accusing the Labour leader of using "weaselly language" about Moscow's involvement.
"The whole House will have noticed the somewhat weaselly language of the leader of the opposition in failing to condemn what I think is now incontrovertible in the eyes of all right thinking people, the involvement of the Russian state at the highest level in the Salisbury poisonings," Mr Johnson said.
But a spokesperson for Mr Corbyn said that he had been led by the evidence in his response to the attacks.
They said: “Jeremy has had a series of security briefings since March, including today.
“He has proceeded on the basis of the evidence and that is the right approach. [Since March] that evidence has shifted to direct Russian authorship of the attack.
“That is why Jeremy clearly said we would support reasonable and effective steps the Government might take against the Russian state or the GRU.”
WREATH TRIP PROBE
The criticism of the Labour leader’s response comes as it was revealed that Parliament’s ethics watchdog has launched an investigation into his failure to register a contraversial 2014 trip.
Mr Corbyn is accsued of failing to declare details of a conference in Tunisia during which he was reported to have a wreath was laid at the graves of figures linked to the 1972 massacre of Israeli athletes in Munich - allegations which Labour deny.
Mr Corbyn has claimed that the visit did not meet the declaration threshold of £300, and maintains that all appropriate declarations were made for the trip.
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