Seriously out of touch

Fresh polling about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership suggests he might be the most unpopular new Labour leader of all time. One reason might be his eclectic, eccentric new shadow cabinet. For instance, Mr Corbyn took a bold risk when he appointed the Bristol MP Kerry McCarthy as shadow farming minister. Ms McCarthy is a vegan, which means that she opposes the consumption of meat and dairy products. It is a bit like appointing an illiterate as shadow culture secretary.

To make matters worse, Ms McCarthy has told a magazine that she is “militant” about her veganism, adding: “I really believe that meat should be treated in exactly the same way as tobacco, with public campaigns to stop people eating it.” The remark is so strange, so surreal, that the idea does not demand serious interrogation – except to say that it probably would have a deleterious effect upon the people Ms McCarthy wishes to represent in the agriculture sector. As to how the public campaign would play out, we leave that to the imagination of the reader. But the idea of plain packaging for lamb chops springs to mind.

Labour conference begins shortly and Mr Corbyn will doubtless want to use it to relaunch his radical crusade to save Britain from the Tories, the “greedy” capitalists and, perhaps even, the “callous” carnivores. But the task will not be easy. Every day, it seems, another revelation shows just how out of touch and out of date the Labour Party’s new philosophy is. At best it’s ridiculous. At worst it is contemptuous of the facts and of public opinion. Corbynism should come with a health warning: “Voting for this ideology could seriously damage your country.”