Noam Chomsky had a fiery clash with Times Radio presenter Matt Chorley over Jeremy Corbyn’s record as Labour leader.
The linguist said the (now independent) MP for Islington North won an enormous victory in 2017, but the British establishment came down on him with a ton of bricks, with false, deceitful propaganda about anti-Semitism.
Corbyn lost the 2017 election, but he managed to put a significant dent into the Conservative’s majority and increased Labour’s vote share more than any of the party’s leaders since 1945.
Analysis of marginal seats later revealed he was just 2,227 votes away from having the chance of becoming Prime Minister.
If Corbyn had won seven seats narrowly taken by the Conservatives, he would have had the opportunity to form a “progressive alliance” with all other smaller parties, barring the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
In the run-up to the 2019 election, researchers at Loughborough University found that press hostility towards Corbyn and the Labour Party in the mainstream media doubled compared to the 2017 election.
The Conservatives, conversely, saw negative coverage about them halve.
Related: Corbyn endured a ‘major assault’ from the British media