Evening Standard comment: Russia crisis exposes danger of PM Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn consistently dismays the majority of Labour MPs with his eccentric views, his ineffective performances at PMQs and his hard-Left takeover.

When asked in private how they could make him Prime Minister, most respond lamely, saying there’s no prospect of unseating him, and anything is better than the Conservative Government we have.

They comfort themselves with the thought that, were he to lead a government, sensible Labour MPs who held his majority would prevent him doing anything too crazy or damaging.

That was always a delusion, and Mr Corbyn’s response this week to the attempted murder of Sergei and Yulia Skripal has exposed it. Prime Ministers often act without the need for parliamentary approval.

Ignore Tory cries that Mr Corbyn is “playing politics” with security. The ferocity of the Tory response shows that political advantage is always sought.

While the Evening Standard has applauded Mrs May’s package of retaliation against Russia, Mr Corbyn is perfectly within his rights to question if it will work.

Some ministers privately suspect it won’t. But what is unacceptable is when Mr Corbyn refuses to condemn Russia in any way for its involvement in an attempted assassination involving the use of a chemical weapon, threatening the emergency services and people who rushed to help the stricken pair.

It is not — as Mr Corbyn’s aide Seumas Milne suggests — a conspiracy theory, or an attempt to frame Russia, to point the finger at the Kremlin when a deadly nerve agent that only it has manufactured is used.

Either the attack came on the orders of President Putin, or it was carried out by rogue elements of the Russian state that he cannot control.

Either way, the Russian government bears direct responsibility. The refusal to say so is alarming enough coming from a Leader of the Opposition.

Were a Prime Minister to behave this way, the damage would be catastrophic.

The opioid time bomb

Opioids investigation - David Cohen

Do the drugs work? No — or at least almost never for the sort of blinding long-term pain that makes life a misery.

Today, at the start of a major investigation, we expose the shocking cost to our health, happiness and the NHS purse of opioid over-prescription.

These are drugs handed out to control pain and they are everywhere: 24 million prescriptions to 3.1 million people in England last year. Yet as our investigation reveals, in nine out of 10 cases of chronic pain, opioids make no difference at all.

So why aren’t we told this? Why does a cash-strapped NHS waste £210 million a year on opioid prescriptions? And why are people being given such risky drugs needlessly?

Opioids were involved with more than 20,000 hospital admissions in England last year.

In the United States they bring a plague of addiction, criminality and deaths. Thankfully, we do not suffer the same scourge here. But we have found that of the five most powerful ones available, none comes with explicit warnings about addiction risks.

People must be told about the potential for harm.

They are effective in cancer and end-of-life-care, but handed out in their millions, like sweets for chronic pain, they offer false hope, and as we report today, can wreck lives and destroy families.

Heading for Rotterdam

News that Unilever will no longer have its global HQ in Britain as well as the Netherlands is a blow.

Our country worked hard in recent years to create a competitive environment that attracted international businesses, and this decision by one of the world’s largest and most international firms will reinforce the economic evidence that the UK is now falling behind.

The Brexiteers scream that Brexit has nothing to do with this, and the company does not want to pile insult onto injury.

But ask yourself this question: if Unilever had chosen Britain instead of Holland, do you think it would be saying Brexit had nothing to do with it?

Or would we be hearing further nonsense about a “Brexit bonus” and “Project Fear” confounded?

We all know the answer.