Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn accuses UK establishment, Israel of wanting him to fail

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said he was the victim of a conspiracy by the UK establishment and Israel in a campaign that prevented him from becoming prime minister during the last general election in 2019.

Speaking to left-wing publication Declassified UK, Corbyn said the attacks against him began in 2015 - the year he was elected - when an anonymous British general warned of "direct action" to stop Corbyn from getting into power. 

The general threatened “mass resignations at all levels and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny.” 

Corbyn's team publicly dismissed the general's threat as a "rogue element and they didn’t speak for anybody else".

"But I thought it was a sort of shot across the bows, a warning to me," Corbyn told Declassified UK.

He said the warning was aimed at his foreign policy, which he claims is “based on peace, based on human rights, based on democracy, based on fair trade, rather than the very pro-American defence and foreign policy" of the British establishment.

The left-wing leader said his socialist principles and anti-war foreign policy led to the establishment actively working to end the prospect of him becoming prime minister.

“I had my first speech outside Number 10 as prime minister all planned out,” Corbyn said. 

“I was going to announce homelessness in Britain ends now, next week no-one will be sleeping rough.” 

He added that he had various meetings with the MI5 and MI6 intelligence services where the difference between his views and theirs was plain to see.

“They acknowledged I had a different view from themselves and the government, and the meetings were… pretty frank. Were they aggressive? No. It was an intelligent discussion. Obviously it was all recorded."

The meetings, which were intended to be top secret, were soon after leaked to the press.

"Obviously it was all then leaked out as a way to be deliberately undermining of me”, he argued.

Corbyn added that then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also disapproved of him leading the United Kingdom.

"Sorry, who is Benjamin Netanyahu to decide who the British prime minister should be? It’s not for me to decide who the Israeli prime minister should be… so who is he to make that kind of comment?"

Corbyn was propelled from the backbenches to become Labour leader in 2015 after decades of left-wing and pro-Palestinian activism.

His strongly held socialist views attracted thousands of new members but caused deep ideological infighting with more centrist elements of the Labour party.

In October 2020, Corbyn was suspended from the party following a report that accused him of anti-Semitism.

His team was accused of failing to act on repeated incidents of anti-Semitic behaviour.