[Music]
okay I
welcome to Sputnik orbiting the world
with me George Galloway and me gri a
democratic explosion unprecedented in
British history that's all who knew the
long hot summer of 2015 would provide
such epocal headlines as this on Jeremy
Corbin written by the most significant
chronicler of our age Sheamus mil of the
Guardian who joins us now Sheamus uh a
very powerful opener to your peace in
the guardian this week is not an
exaggeration uh how come so few people
saw it coming well I mean that is the
case we I mean literally nobody saw it
coming includ coming including Jeremy
Corbin but now it's happened I think we
can see what it came out of but yeah I
don't think it is an exaggeration
because you know last week we had you
know nearly 170,000 people join the
labor party in one day alone
uh and that is now that's more than uh
for example all the people who voted for
David Cameron AS leader of the Tory
party in 2005 when he became leader it's
almost the totality of the membership of
the labor party at the time of the
general election three months ago yeah
and I mean the labor party has tripled
in size in in two months and it's
overwhelmingly down to the Jeremy Corbin
campaign it's something I really think
that could not have been foreseen but it
tells us something about the time we're
living in you know both its volatility
but also the fact that there is a deep
revulsion against the existing political
system and a thirst for something
different and that was looking in
Britain to express itself in some way or
another in Scotland we know how it was
expressed through the referendum the
independence referendum and the SNP
surge in the general election I think in
the rest of the country it's being
expressed right now through this
extraordinary um leadership election
which at the beginning you know when it
started in the aftermath of the election
looked like it would be the dullest ever
and a kind of reversion to old style new
labor politics and it's very much not
like that now no as someone who has been
um smeared and slandered libeled defamed
all of my life uh even I'm shocked at
the mud they're throwing at Jeremy
Corbin but I'm even more surprised that
it doesn't seem to be working where
where is all this coming from and why
isn't it working well that's it I mean
the you you might expect the political
class who've been hand ringing for years
about the declining interest in Party
politics and participation of young
people in particular in politics they
You' think they'd be delighted that
hundreds of thousands are pouring into
one of the two main political parties um
to take part in a democratic election
but not a bit of it of course uh they're
absolutely uh imp parismetrodriving
and so they're trying everything we've
had one uh new labor Grande after
another wielded out to denounce this
process to denounce Corbin to say that
this is uh the road to electoral
Oblivion and then when that didn't work
they've tried as you say more and more
ugly smears against Corbin uh for his
anti-war stance and because he called
for dialogue with Hamas and healah um
you know when Tony Russia it's
apparently a great Scandal to want
better relations with Russia when when
Tony Blair um who has said that you know
this is this is labor dropping off a
cliff has met the leader of Hamas four
times in the last three months so it's a
kind of pretty bizarre Alice in
Wonderland kind of attack but it's now
got nastier still they're trying to
smear Corbin um by association with
anti-Semitism I me it's a really ugly
campaign very very ugly now he's 66
years old you and I have both known him
for uh the best part of 40 years uh the
very last thing in the world you could
credibly accuse Jeremy Corbin of is
racism and of course anti-Semitism is
racism I think you know that the the way
he is uh is one of the reasons um why
this stuff isn't sticking he is so
obviously a decent and honest person
he's unspun you know he's not a
triangulator of any kind he's been
campaigning Against Racism in all its
forms all his life he's been an
indefatigable anti-war campaigner people
are sick of these endless Wars that
Britain is involved in uh and continues
to be he stands for uh an opposition to
an austerity regime which has already
failed and is you know brutally being
reimposed something that's happening all
over Europe and we're seeing this kind
of populist upsurge in different