Corbyn suggests Nato should be disbanded

Former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has suggested that military alliances like Nato ought to be abolished.

Speaking to Times Radio this afternoon, Corbyn was quizzed over whether he thought Nato ought to be disbanded.

He explained: “I would want to see a world where we start to ultimately disband all military alliances. The issue has to be what’s the best way of bringing about peace in the future? Is it by more alliances? Is it by more military build up?

“Ask yourself the question, do military alliances bring peace? Or do they actually encourage each other and build up to a greater danger? I don’t blame Nato for the fact that Russia has invaded Ukraine. What I say is look at the thing historically, and look at the process that could happen at the end of the Ukraine war.

“Look, it’s [Nato] not going to be disbanded now,” he went on, but stressed that such alliances: “tend to build up a mirror image of each other”.

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Current Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer recently suggested that Corbyn’s views on the alliance could contribute to him being barred from re-entering Labour’s parliamentary party. “There is no place in the Labour party for this false equivalence between Russian aggression and Nato,” Sir Keir argued.

In the same Times Radio interview, the Islington North MP also dodged a question over whether he thought the Ukrainian president was a good leader.