Jeremy Corbyn adviser suggests 'deep state' working to stop Labour government

A top adviser to Jeremy Corbyn has suggested the intelligence services are working to prevent him ever becoming Prime Minister.



Andrew Murray said his suspicions were raised by recent newspaper reports about his failure to get a security pass for Parliament nearly a year after applying.

The Mail on Sunday also reported that he has been banned from entering Ukraine for allegedly being part of Vladimir Putin's "global propaganda network".

Mr Murray, who was in the Communist Party of Great Britain and the Communist Party of Britain before joining Labour in 2016, said he believed the "manoeuvrings of what is now called the deep state" could be behind it.

Writing in the New Statesman, he strenuously denied any links to the Russian regime and added: "Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail’s sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the SBU (Ukrainian security services).

"Yes, they got a copy of an SBU letter allegedly banning me back in June, although it is dated 14 September and does not mention me anyway. Don’t publish what you can’t read guys!

"Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?

"We are often told that the days of secret state political chicanery are long past and we must hope so. But sometimes you have to wonder – this curiously timed episode seems less rooted in a Kiev security scare than in a political stunt closer to home."

Mr Murray, who works for Unite general secretary Len McCluskey and is also a part-time adviser to Mr Corbyn, added: "This much I know: the millions of people headed by Corbyn who were right on Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan when the elite, the security services included, were wrong, are near to office – in significant part because of those views.

"Britain could soon have an anti-war government. Vet that, comrades."

It emerged earlier this week that another of Mr Corbyn's staff, his private secretary Iram Awan, had finally been given a Parliament pass nine months after applying for one.

A row had broken out after it was revealed she had been getting signed in by others in the Labour leader's office while her application was processed.