Labour leadership candidate Andy Burnham has blurted out a famed fascist slogan during his Labour Party leadership bid speech today, reaffirming that he would put the interests of the Labour Party before the interests of the United Kingdom.
Speaking on how he would try and bring all elements of his party together, after discussing leadership frontrunner Jeremy Corbyn at length, Burnham said, “Unity is Strength” – a slogan reserved for parodies of fascism, a derivation of “Union is Strength” used by fascist, union leader Oswald Mosley.
Burnham’s speech was intended to be an appeal to the left-wing roots of the Labour Party, during which he made several appeals to Corbyn and his socialist base.
But the appeal may have took a turn into satire itself, as he used a phrase typically heard in dystopian science fiction, often used by dictatorships.
The phrase “Unity is Strength” was the motto used by the fascist British government in the Doctor Who serial “Inferno”. Strength Through Unity is a phrase the fascist British government uses in the 2005 Wachowski Brothers film V for Vendetta.
Burnham’s bizarre, Orwellian language may have epitomised just why the British mainstream is worried about Corbyn and those who try to be like him. The Labour leadership frontrunner is a known avid supporter of late Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez, and has expressed solidarity with terrorist dictatorship Hamas in Gaza.
In the 1961 book “Wrong or Right” by Oswald Mosley, he writes, under the question, “Why is your party called the Union Movement?” the answer, “Because union is strength.”
The book also contains sections called “Attitude to the Jews” and “Hitler and Mussolini”.
Burnham’s speech has, so far, been panned on Twitter by Labour Party members and critics, who claim that his ideas and speeches are derivative. There was no acknowledgment of him pulling ideas from the British Union of Fascists.