Mick Lynch: Ukrainians playing with Nazi imagery provoked the Russian invasion

Before you all lose your shit, read the actual interview, rather than the torygraph’s misleading characterisation of it

https://www.newstatesman.com/encounter/2022/08/mick-lynch-starmers-labour-could-be-another-version-of-the-tories

Starmer and Lynch also differ on Brexit. Lynch and the RMT supported leaving. Why? “Because the European Union has privatisation embedded in its constitution,” he said. “I don’t like the idea that you give your sovereignty and democracy away to a load of bureaucrats and bankers.” Lynch said that Corbyn’s putative programme of nationalisation would not have been legal had Britain remained in the EU.

“The free movement of labour I don’t think helps anyone,” he continued, “because it means the countries that people are coming from have lost some of their most able people… and it didn’t help the labour market in Britain,” he said. “But people don’t argue that – they argue that they can’t get olives, or they’ve got a long queue to get to Tuscany.”

I asked him whether Brexit has weakened the EU in the face of Russian aggression and the rise of China.

“The EU also provoked a lot of the trouble in Ukraine. It was all about being pro-EU and all the rest of it,” he said, referring to the pro-EU Maidan revolution in Ukraine in 2014. “There were a lot of corrupt politicians in Ukraine. And while they were doing that, there were an awful lot of people [in Ukraine] playing with Nazi imagery, and going back to the [Second World] war, and all that. So, it’s not just that this stuff has sprung from one place.”

Lynch’s line about the role of Nazi or neo-Nazi groups in Ukraine resembles that of the Kremlin’s. But in March, Lynch and the RMT condemned the invasion and called for the Russian army to withdraw.

/r/LabourUK Thread Link - telegraph.co.uk