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Bethan McKernan
Oct 08, 2015
David Cameron was met with no fewer than five standing ovations for his speech at the Tory party conference in Manchester on Wednesday.
His passionate delivery on equality and fairness in British society was later attacked as "mutton dressed as Blair", and many people noted how the centrist language allowed the prime minister to slip in more than a few right wing statements and policy ideas.
The PM's attack on newly elected opposition leader, Jeremy Corbyn, however, was anything but veiled:
My friends – we cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.
Many of Corbyn's detractors (from all parts of the political spectrum) have accused the left-winger of being too close to terror groups such as Hezbollah, Hamas and the IRA, and showing sympathy towards Russia in the past.
But if the prime minister was focusing solely on Corbyn's support for radical Islamists, he might be throwing stones from glass houses.
In an excruciating interview with Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow the day before his conference speech, Cameron struggled to defend a "squalid" deal it was recently revealed that the UK government struck with Saudi Arabia.
It emerged that the two nations agreed to vote for each other to secure seats on the UN Human Rights Council session between 2013 - 2016.
Saudi Arabia has one of the worst human rights records of any modern country, and is currently attempting to execute a man for the role he played in Arab Spring protests when he was a teenager.
The PM said he would personally attempt to raise the case of Ali Mohammed al-Nimr, but only if there was an “opportunity” with Saudi authorities.
Cameron had no better answer for why the deal was struck than because the British government has “a relationship with Saudi Arabia."
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