Jeremy Corbyn has been compared to a Japanese soldier who refused to believe the Second World War was over after the politician boasted 2019 was ‘quite a year’ for his humiliated party.
The outgoing party leader used his New Year message to rail against billionaires and to champion the ‘movement’ he built, but failed to address his party’s cataclysmic election defeat.
‘We are the resistance to Boris Johnson,’ he said. ‘We will be campaigning every day. We will be on the front line, both in Parliament and on the streets.’
Jeremy Corbyn has been branded ‘deluded’ for saying it had been ‘quite the year’ for Labour
Mr Corbyn will stand down by March next year and make way for a new leader, with Rebecca Long Bailey and Keir Starmer said to be in the frame.
But his final end of year message will be seen as extraordinary as it fails to acknowledge Labour’s terrible showing in the election and does not include an apology to the many Labour MPs who lost their seats.
There is also no mention of inclusion after the party’s anti-Semitism scandal – and Mr Corbyn’s failure to deal with it.
Former Labour MP for Barnsley East Michael Dugher took to Twitter after Mr Corbyn’s message to compare the outgoing leader to Hiroo Onoda, the last solider of the Japanese Imperial Army to surrender.
‘Meet Lieutenant Hiroo Onoda of the Japanese Imperial Army,’ he said. ‘The year is 1974. Lieutenant Onoda has spent nearly three decades holding out in the jungle on an island in the Philippines, refusing to accept that the Japanese lost the Second World War back in 1945…’
Former Labour MP for Barnsley Michael Dugher took to Twitter after Mr Corbyn’s message to compare the outgoing leader to Japanese soldier Hiroo Onoda
Mr Onoda, who died in 2014, was an intelligence officer who refused to surrender after the Second World War ended in 1945 and instead spent 29 years hiding in the jungle
Mr Onoda, who died in 2014, was an intelligence officer who refused to surrender after the Second World War ended in 1945 and instead spent 29 years hiding in the jungle while continuing a guerilla war.
The former soldier remained on an island in the Philippines until 1974 because he did not believe the war was over.
He became the last Japanese soldier to surrender – but only after his former commander, who in 1945 had told him to stay behind and spy on American troops, was flown from Japan to order him to give up.
His extraordinary determination to carry on made Mr Onoda a hero in his homeland, although he was said to have killed 30 people while evading capture.
During his formal surrender to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mr Onoda saluted the Japanese flag and symbolically handed over his samurai sword while still wearing an army uniform that had been patched many times over.
His generation was taught absolute loyalty to Japan and its emperor. Soldiers in the Imperial Army observed a code that said death was preferable to surrender.
Mr Onoda, a lieutenant in army intelligence, had been sent to Lubang, 90 miles south-west of the Philippine capital Manila, in December 1944.
Others accused the outgoing leader of being ‘in denial’ in messages sent on social media
Most of his comrades surrendered when US troops landed on the island less than three months later but he refused to give up and remained in the jungle with three other soldiers.
He later recalled: ‘Every Japanese soldier was prepared for death, but as an intelligence officer I was ordered to conduct guerilla warfare and not to die.
‘I became an officer and I received an order. If I could not carry it out, I would feel shame. I am very competitive.’
Former Labour MP Ian Austin, who stood down at the last election after criticising anti-Semitism within the party, added that Mr Corbyn’s divisive message was ‘deluded’.
‘What will it take for Jeremy Corbyn to understand the damage his dreadful leadership has done to the Labour Party and the extent to which he and the party were rejected by the public?’, he said.
In his New Year message, Mr Corbyn said the party should continue to focus on the NHS, climate change and poverty
‘Under his leadership the party was poisoned with racism, extremism and intolerance. He ought to be apologising to the Labour supporters he let down and the MPs who lost their seats.’
Former Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith said: ‘Labour have withdrawn into a virtual chatroom. This leadership election now is in danger of becoming an exercise in virtue signalling to the hard-Left.’
In his message, Mr Corbyn said: ‘2019 has been quite the year for our country and for our Labour movement. And now we are not just entering a new year but a new decade. And the period ahead could not be more important.
‘It will be crucial if we are to stop irreversible damage being caused by the climate crisis and the particular effects that has on people in the global south; if we are to stop the pain plaguing our country: food banks, poverty and people struggling to get by; if we are to protect our precious NHS.
‘Our movement is very strong. We are half a million people and growing. We are in every region and nation of our country.’
He railed against billionaires and newspaper owners and warned that 2020 will be ‘tough’.
‘We’re not backed by the press barons, by the billionaires or by the millionaires who work for the billionaires. We’re backed by you. We are by the many, for the many.
‘We’re up for the fight, to protect what we hold dear, and to build to win and to transform,’ he said.