The Stop the War fringe event at Labour conference is always a laugh. Last night Corbyn aide Andrew Murray, who has previously expressed open support for North Korea, gave this absolutely textbook example of the “Stop the War but”:

“Now North Korea’s own conduct is often provocative and belligerent, I don’t defend its rhetoric, but this is a country which perhaps has learned the lesson from the Iraq War, that Iraq got invaded when it did not have weapons of mass destruction. So being threatened continually by the Americans you go out and you get them.”

Stop the War veteran Lindsey German then argued North Korea gets unfair treatment compared with other countries:

“I don’t agree with what Kim Jong Un is doing but let’s face it, the North Koreans are testing some missiles most weeks, the Americans test something like a thousand missiles a year, the Indians and Pakistanis test nuclear weapons, nobody puts sanctions on them, nobody threatens them with war… The war in Korea which went on for three years was devastating for the people of North Korea. They had absolutely no targets left to hit because they destroyed every single town in that part of the country. They deliberately targeted dams so that they would flood the rice fields and they would therefore starve the population. This is the record of America in Korea, and they wonder why people might be a little bit suspicious.”

“I don’t agree with Kim Jong Un, but…”