When the mask slips, he neither thinks nor talks like a democratic politician
Jeremy Corbyn’s policy since becoming Labour leader has been to present himself as a well-meaning and avuncular fellow who wishes everyone well. This highly manufactured image is admittedly at odds with his hard-Left past, which included fraternising with IrA terrorists and Islamic extremists, and supporting the lunatic socialist government of Venezuela.
But to an astonishing extent the re-branding — whose chief architect, other than Corbyn himself, has been his Pr adviser, the ex-Guardian marxist journalist Seumas milne — has worked.
The revolutionary Jeremy Corbyn has been largely concealed within a seemingly reasonable and decent old codger who sometimes sympathetically reads out the hard luck stories of unfortunate people at Prime minister’s Question Time. What a kind sort of chap he seems to be. Until now, that is. For during the past few days, and in particular in the video which he released via social media on Tuesday, the mask has unintentionally slipped. A darker and more intimidating man has emerged, who I suggest is the real Jeremy Corbyn.
This saga began a week ago when The Sun produced evidence from a Czech archive which showed that as a young mP, Corbyn had at least three meetings with a Czechoslovak spy called Jan Sarkocy in London between 1986 and 1989. This, of course, was a time when the country was still a vassal of the Soviet Union.
Over the following days, Sarkocy told journalists how he had met Corbyn more than ten times.
According to the former spy, the youthful firebrand was regarded by his masters in Prague as an ‘asset’. In other words, a potential spy and traitor to his country.
Should we believe Sarkocy? I don’t know. He may be telling the whole truth or part of the truth, or he may be inventing a fantasy based on the three meetings he undoubtedly did have with Corbyn. BUT contrary to what Corbyn said in his video (‘ lies and smears’), and the assertions of his various lieutenants, newspapers have not accused him of having been a spy. They have merely suggested there are important questions dangling in the air.
If only the Labour leader had attempted to answer them. But apart from admitting that at least one meeting with Sarkocy did take place, he has issued blanket, angry denials, and made no attempt to explain when, where and why he met the Czechoslovak spy.
It’s possible, of course, that there is a wholly innocent explanation, yet his refusal to offer a detailed account of his behaviour has slightly increased my suspicions, though not to the extent of assuming he’s guilty.
There was also at the back of my mind the thought that if he did unwisely consort with Sarkocy (I still instinctively doubt that he could have been an actual spy), this relationship happened 30 years ago.
However stupid or dishonourable his conduct may have been, one was inevitably left with the reflection that these events took place in the fairly distant past, and in another world far removed from our own. mightn’t the 68-year-old Corbyn be a very different beast?
The evidence of the past few days is that he hasn’t changed — or, at any rate, that he is quite as nasty and menacing today as he can have ever been in the past. All Seumas milne’s painstaking reconstructive work has been blown apart.
The one minute 45- second video released on Tuesday has already been viewed by nearly one million people, most of whom may be Corbyn admirers. yet to my mind it constitutes an extraordinary selfinflicted political wound. I heartily recommend everybody to take a close look at it.
Part of its oddity is its disembodied quality. Which other British political leader thinks it fitting to communicate with the public through the medium of film? There is something creepy and Big Brother-ish about it. SITTING in an anonymous room, untroubled by the intrusive questions of pesky journalists, he might almost be a Third World autocrat delivering a homily to the public he does not wish to meet.
But if the approach is unusual, the content is unprecedented. I am willing to bet that, since the dawn of the democratic age in this country, no major political leader has issued such a naked and shameless threat to the survival of a free Press.
Corbyn builds up slowly, dismissing Sarkocy as a fantasist, and deriding his ‘ridiculous smears’, without (as usual) tackling any of his specific allegations. It is when he turns his attention to newspapers that he says something inadvertently revealing: ‘A free Press is essential for democracy and we don’t want to close it down. We want to open it up.’ We don’t want to close it
down. In denying something which had never occurred to most people — that Corbyn’s Labour Party might actually shut down independent newspapers — he manages to introduce the novel and scary thought that this is exactly what it might do.
And then, addressing the ‘Press barons’ with their ‘bad old habits’, he incautiously unveils a sinister threat that
sounds incongruous in the mouth of a supposedly democratic politician: ‘Well, we’ve got news for them. Change is coming.’
This can only mean one thing — that the freedom newspapers enjoy to ask difficult questions about any matter of public interest, such as Corbyn’s past (and, indeed, the record of any politician) would be curtailed if his hard-Left version of Labour comes to power.
Some people will see this as an idle threat. I don’t believe it is. I think we should take what Jeremy Corbyn says very seriously indeed, because he views critical newspapers as a potential impediment to the far-reaching changes he intends to unleash on British society.
What he says is so shocking that I am saddened that the BBC, which, despite everything, must surely believe in a free Press, is not up in arms. Nor have I yet heard any expressions of outrage coming from the Corbyn-supporting Guardian newspaper.
They should be warned. If the Labour leader deals with conservative-minded newspapers to his satisfaction, he will turn on his so-called friends should they dare to stray from the party line.
Am I being alarmist? I hope so. But I fear not. In my worst nightmares I never imagined that the leader of a major political party who, let’s face it, could easily become prime minister in these tumultuous times, would threaten the freedom of the Press.
Why shouldn’t newspapers ask questions about the nature of his relationship with Jan Sarkocy? It’s not an outlandish idea that 30 years ago the Czechoslovaks might have targeted a young hard-Left critic of the US who was also a voluble nuclear unilateralist.
After all, the Soviet KGB recruited others, including the Guardian journalist Richard Gott in the 1960s, and very possibly the Left-wing trade union leader Jack Jones.
As I say, I instinctively doubt that Corbyn was one of their number. But given he had three meetings with a Czechoslovak spy, and that more encounters are alleged to have taken place, there are proper questions for the Press to ask which he should be reasonably expected to answer.
What may have happened 30 years ago is almost certainly less terrifying than what we have discovered over the past few days. I’m grateful for the enlightenment and petrified, too. When the mask slips, Jeremy Corbyn neither thinks nor talks like a democratic politician.