Corbyn has really gone off the rails
WOW. As far as own goals go, Jezza’s “tough on seatlessness, tough on the causes of seatlessness” stunt is a back-of-the-net classic.
First there’s the sheer incompetence involved. If politicians are going to tell a whopper they usually shore it up rather more effectively than Jezza did. Was Corbyn not aware there are security cameras on Virgin trains? Did no one on his staff know? Didn’t they realise that he’d be taped ambling to his nice comfy seat 15 minutes after being filmed sitting pathetically on the carriage floor, bleating about having to squat there for the entire three-hour journey?
Then there’s the shabby dishonesty. Yes it’s true British trains are often overcrowded, late and unreliable, something needs to be done about it (although speaking as someone who went to school by train daily in the 1960s and 1970s I can assure the Labour leader things were even more abysmal under his cure of choice: nationalisation. Of course he knows that. It’s one of the myriad truths he’s in denial about).
But it is palpably not true that he was forced to crouch on the floor all the way from London to Newcastle. There were seats available. You can see them in shot as Jezza strolls straight past them, heading for his sit-down protest. (An aide later claimed that the seats actually contained tiny people, small children hidden from the camera, or possibly bags. What, all of them, in the entire apparently empty section? I think someone’s pants are on fire.)
Then there’s the hypocrisy. Corbyn’s meant to be personally delivering “the new politics”, isn’t he? Straight talk, no tricks, no fibs. Now he’s been caught red-handed pulling off a shameless (and hopeless) media stunt. It was about as straight as a corkscrew.
And his attempt to talk his way out of trouble at a press conference on Wednesday was toe-curling.
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a man squirming angrily before. He said he’d been, er, looking for two seats together so he could, er, sit with his wife and he, er, couldn’t find a pair of empty seats.
Well he didn’t say that on the video, did he? Just that the train was so “ram-packed” he couldn’t get a seat and was forced to sit on the floor. Pants pretty well alight now, right? (Oh and by the way – where was his wife? Sitting on her own bit of swaying floor? I doubt it.)
Former Labour transport spokesman Michael Dugher (sacked by Corbyn last year) talked of “his latest bizarre antics” and went on: “The bigger problem for Labour is that the voters can spot a bull ****** a mile away.”
Corbyn’s unbearable sanctimony has indeed been exposed for all to see. Of course his supporters, hopelessly lost in the grotesque Jeremy Corbyn love-in (“We loooooove you, Jeremeeeeeeee!” they trill witlessly at his rallies) will dismiss Seatgate as a media conspiracy to do their darling down. Sorry guys. Own goal. Accept it. Actually, on one level I’m almost grateful to the Dear Leader. Speaking as a columnist who’s never sure where his next 500 words are coming from, Jezza is the gift that just keeps on giving. THE enormous airship – the world’s largest aircraft – that came a cropper when it nose-dived in a field on a test flight this week has been dubbed the Flying Bum because of its resemblance to Kim Kardashian’s backside.
I think the weird craft looks like a friendly manatee I once encountered in the Florida Keys. But I suppose the Flying Bum will stick. Like Boaty McBoatface it has a truly irreverent British ring to it.