https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/04/26/dictators-despots-despicable-groups-corbyn-has-broken-bread/

Dictators, despots and despicable groups: How Corbyn has broken bread with far more controversial figures than President Trump

Jeremy Corbyn once wrote that he enjoyed “a takeaway dinner” with Hamas chief Khaled Mahal - and yet he is unwilling to dine with the Queen and President Trump at Buckingham Palace.

His decision to snub a state banquet with the so-called leader of the free world is undoubtedly designed to kowtow to his anti-Trump Corbynista fanbase as much as a reflection of his virulent opposition to US foreign policy.

Arguing it would be wrong to "roll out the red carpet" for the US president, whom he accused of using "racist and misogynist rhetoric", the Labour leader said the US-UK relationship did not need "the pomp and ceremony" of June's state visit.

Yet the virtue-signalling boycott appears even more politically cynical in light of Corbyn’s willingness to meet a string of controversial figures in the past.

He happily donned white tie to attend a state banquet in honour of Chinese President Xi Jinping shortly after becoming Labour leader in 2015 - despite concerns about the Communist country’s human rights abuses.

And in 2009, he accepted a free trip funded by controversial Palestinian lobbyists to meet President Assad in Syria. Corbyn responded to the trip by writing in The Morning Star that he had been exposed to evidence that ‘the Israeli tail wags the US dog’.

In another journalistic foray in the left-wing newspaper, the avowed socialist boasted of his “long meeting” with Mashal in 2010. A Labour spokesman was later unable to explain how Corbyn had met the Hamas chief in the bombed out wreck of Gaza’ parliament building when Mashal was still in exile from the city - and did not return until 2012.

It was not the first time the veteran MP for Islington North appeared on the wrong side of foreign affairs.

Twelve days after the Brighton bombing, Corbyn invited two convicted IRA terrorists, Linda Quigley and Gerard McLoughlin to the Commons. The 1984 attempt to assassinate Margaret Thatcher killed five people and injured dozens more.

Odd then, that Corbyn should have found the presence of his former Labour colleague Chuka Umunna at a recent Brexit meeting so offensive, he stormed out, having initially refused to engage with Theresa May either.

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Having described Hamas and Hezbollah as ‘friends’, Corbyn appeared much more willing to meet leaders of both groups than the Change UK MP, despite them being proscribed as terrorist organisations by the US Department of State.

n a speech to the Stop the War Coalition in 2009, he declared: “It will be my pleasure and my honour to host an event in parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking…I’ve also invited friends from Hamas”.

Another ‘friend’ is Russian president Vladimir Putin, who Corbyn has chosen to defend on a number of occasions, including after the Salisbury poisoning.

In March last year, he appeared to misjudge the public mood by calling for Russia to take a test sample of the chemicals found in the cathedral city “to reveal the identity of its perpetrators”.

It came after he defended Putin’s actions in Ukraine, saying his “crime is to dare resist this US Empire, taking a stand against the hypocrisy, double standards, and complete lack of respect for other countries, cultures, and values it represents.”

And let’s not forget that Corbyn has also happily sat down in front of the camera for a series of interviews for the state owned Iranian broadcaster Press TV, earning £20,000 in the process. The channel has been banned by Ofcom and regularly hosts Holocaust deniers. They were fined £100,000 in 2011 after conducting an interview with an imprisoned Newsweek journalist that was under duress.

And of course there was that celebratory phonecall to Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro when he took power in 2014, which came after Corbyn had written his predecessor Hugo Chavez a warm obituary in 2013 and followed praise for Cuban leader Fidel Castro’s “achievements”, describing him as a “champion of social justice”,.

Appearing once again to have been on the wrong side of Anglo-American relations following 9/11, Corbyn said: “What goes around comes around”. Then, in 2015 he described the assassination of Osama bin Laden as a ‘tragedy’ comparable to the attack on the Twin Towers.

With views like this, perhaps it will be Trump thanking his lucky stars tha