Guido Fawkes and other reactionary outlets have been fulminating over claims that the leader of the Labour party was a collaborator with the Czech security services. While the Czech agent concerned has, for reasons of his own, puffed the affair, the archivist of the former communist organisation herself has confirmed that Corbyn was no more than "a person of interest". I am as ready as the next man to condemn Corbyn for the company he kept as a firebrand back-bencher. However, I do believe him in this instance that his meetings with Dymik/Sarkocy were innocent.
Where I will agree with Guido is that BBC TV channels have failed to deal with the story. However, an interview with the archivist herself was broadcast by BBC Radio News earlier this week.
We should put the current brouhaha in context. Respected Guardian journalist Richard Gott was fingered in the 1990s as a Soviet mole. Gott admitted: "I took red gold, even if it was only in the form of expenses for myself and my partner. That, in the circumstances, was culpable stupidity, though at the time it seemed more like an enjoyable joke". There is the incentive for intelligence officers to exaggerate the number and importance of the agents they are controlling, to boost not only their reputation in their service but also their expense accounts. And Corbyn's and Gott's chats over coffee are as nothing compared to the (admittedly minor) treachery by a Conservative junior minister in the 1960s.
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