The former Labour leader’s failed response to the poisoning of a former Russian double agent and his daughter in Salisbury reportedly angered the party. Journalists Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick Maguire said in their new book Mr Corbyn’s handling of Russia hurt his chances of becoming Prime Minister.
The author’s book Left Out tells the story of the Labour party’s journey from Mr Corbyn to the current leader Keir Starmer.
Mr Pogrund and Mr Maguire said Labour MPs were in “despair” over Mr Corbyn’s reaction to the Salisbury poisoning.
In 2018, the then Prime Minister, Theresa May revealed that samples of the poison given to Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were identified as a Soviet-era nerve agent which had originated in Russia.
From an extract of the book published in the Times, the authors wrote: “Corbyn did not respond in kind or, indeed, blame the Kremlin for ordering the attack.
“Instead, he called for a ‘robust dialogue with Russia on all the issues currently dividing our countries, rather than simply cutting off contact and letting the tensions and divisions get worse and potentially even more dangerous’.
“Then, to the despair of MPs behind him, he turned his focus to the question of tax avoidance by the Conservative Party’s Russian donors.
“Worse was to come two days later, when May announced to the Commons that 23 Russian diplomats would be expelled from the UK over the attack.”
The authors said Mr Corbyn refused to criticise the Kremlin.
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Mr Skripal was a Russian military officer and also worked as a double agent for the UK’s Secret Intelligence Service from 1995 until he was arrested in Moscow in 2004.
A few days after the poisoning attack Boris Johnson, who was then the foreign secretary, “appeared to blame Moscow for the incident”.
The authors said: “Though he claimed not to be ‘pointing fingers’, he made no secret of where the government believed responsibility lay.
“Threatening a boycott of that summer’s football World Cup in Russia if the state’s culpability could be proven, Johnson blasted the Kremlin as ‘in many respects a malign and disruptive force’.”
Diane Abbott also seemed to condemn Russia for the attack.
Speaking to Sky News at the time, she said: “We cannot allow London and the Home Counties to become a kind of killing field for the Russian state.”
Mr Pogrund and Mr Maguire wrote that aides said Mr Corbyn had a habit of breaking off sensitive discussions at shadow cabinet.
They said he did this “to bend the ear of Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary ‘about the Western Sahara or about West Papua. Self-determination for oppressed peoples was his driving thing when it came to foreign policy’.”
Mr Corbyn’s executive director of communications, Seumas Milne, “double downed” on the Labour leader’s suggestion that the nerve agent should be tested by Russia and also compared the incident to the lead up to Iraq War.
The authors wrote in their book that James Mills, Mr Corbyn’s senior political adviser, said “That’s f***ing going to cost us the election!” in reaction to Mr Milne’s comments.
