The Great Corbyn Myth

Reckon he’s a nice, decent bloke? Well let me show you the dark, menacing reality behind...

THE last time I talked to Jo Cox she was scared. It was 12 days after she had expressed her regret at nominating Jeremy Corbyn for the Labour leadership. Her office had been inundated with phone calls. Many of them were aggressive, some were openly abusive.

She told me she wasn’t overly concerned for herself, but that she was worried about the effect on her staff. ‘It’s been virtually non-stop,’ she said. She was a Labour MP, and she and her team were being confronted by Labour members conducting a campaign of hate on behalf of the leader of the Labour Party.

On Thursday, Jeremy Corbyn formally launched his re-election bid. ‘I hold out the hand of friendship,’ he said. Then he announced all Labour MPs would be facing mandatory reselection. Just in case they didn’t get the message, he added: ‘It’s the job, it’s the duty, it’s the responsibility of every Labour MP to get behind the party.’ Two hours later, it was announced that police had advised Angela Eagle to cancel all her public surgeries on safety grounds.

Since his election, almost everything Jeremy Corbyn has touched has turned to ashes. But in one area he has been successful. He has managed to construct a narrative that essentially says: ‘Jeremy Corbyn is a nice man. He may be a poor Labour leader, he may have woeful political judgment, but he is basically a decent person.’

Jeremy Corbyn is not a nice or decent man. He is a coward. He is a hypocrite. He is a bully. And he is a fraud.

On Friday, a story emerged that graphically illuminates how Jeremy Corbyn – the real Jeremy Corbyn, rather than the beatific icon worshipped by his followers – operates.

A Labour Whip, Conor McGinn, had given an interview mildly critical of his leader. A meeting was held. Sacking McGinn could trigger a series of resignations in the Whips’ Office.

SO A call was put in to Labour’s Chief Whip from Corbyn’s political officer, Katy Clark. The decision had been taken to phone McGinn’s father, a Sinn Fein councillor, to put pressure on his son. ‘It’s what Jeremy wants to do,’ Clark explained. The Chief Whip responded that this would be a very bad idea, and the plan was ultimately shelved.

When news of the scheme broke, Corbyn initially denied it – the cowardice. Then he issued a second statement claiming he personally had not issued the threat, even though that had never been the allegation – the fraud. He then dispatched his key ally John McDonnell to call for a ‘code of conduct’ to govern the leadership election – the hypocrisy. And as he did so, key supporters were roaming Twitter, smearing McGinn’s family for being terrorists – the bullying.

This is Corbyn’s MO. It is how he does his politics. The bullying and intimidation are not a by-product of his strategy – they are a pre-requisite for it. On those rare occasions that Corbyn directly addresses the cases of harassment or bigotry perpetrated in his name, he falls back on the ‘few rotten apples argument’, then issues the ritualistic and insincere statement that ‘I condemn all forms of harassment’.

But where was this harassment and racism when the Tories were conducting their leadership election? Or when Ed and David Miliband were fighting their own fiercely fought contest in 2010? Why is it the rotten apples have all mysteriously appeared in Corbyn’s barrel?

It’s because the soil in Corbyn’s orchard is rancid and polluted. Much has been made in recent weeks of how we are now living in an era of ‘post-truth politics’, where facts can be bludgeoned to death by a single large and oft-repeated lie. Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage – the poster boys of the Leave campaign – were held up as its architects.

But it is actually Jeremy Corbyn who has emerged as the Old Father Time of our post-truth age. Attended by his cultist and thuggish followers, it is Corbyn who has managed to bend reality to his will.

That is the only way the man who earned about £20,000 for his appearances fronting Iran’s state propaganda arm, Press TV, can be held up as a principled campaigner for human rights. Or how the man who last week refused to deny offering a peerage to the ‘independent’ chair- man of his anti-Semitism inquiry can masquerade as an heroic campaigner against establishment cronyism. Or how the man who sacked his Shadow Arts Minister while she was undergoing treatment for breast cancer without informing her can pose as someone of unshakeable personal integrity.

Tony Blair is frequently described as the master of spin. But ironically, there is no senior politician in British political history who has crafted a personal image so at variant with the reality than Corbyn.

Some people will say none of this matters. Indeed, that to point to these personality flaws is to itself mount an egregious attack. But Corbyn’s supporters seem to put great store in their hero’s character. So let us present people with the truth, not the fan-fiction.

On Tuesday, Owen Smith formally became Corbyn’s challenger. Smith previously worked for the drugs company Pfizer. So Corbyn pledged that if he wins the next election he will ban private pharmaceutical companies from working for the NHS. Drugs that would save hundreds of thousands of lives will effectively be proscribed because someone who dared challenge Corbyn once worked for the industry that provides them. These are not the words of a ‘nice man’ – they are the words of a megalomaniac.

I remember the precise moment I came across the real Jeremy Corbyn. I was watching a fly-on-thewall film about his office. Corbyn is seen in the back of his car, discussing an article that has appeared in the Guardian from respected Jewish journalist Jonathan Freedland.

FREEDLAND had issued a heartfelt plea for Labour’s leader to confront antiSemitism in his party. ‘Utterly disgusting, subliminal nastiness,’ Corbyn spits. ‘He seems kind of obsessed with me.’ The viciousness. The spite. The narcissism. They are laid bare for all to see – or for those who want to see.

If the polls are to be believed, Corbyn is on course for victory over Owen Smith. And maybe he is, though I have a feeling Smith will give him a tougher fight than he is currently anticipating.

But re-election cannot alter this simple fact: Labour’s leader is not a nice or decent man. He is a coward, a hypocrite, a bully and a fraud. And even in our post-truth age, no mandate – however large – can mask flaws like that for ever.

BREXIT Minister David Davis has told friends that negotiating Britain’s exit from the EU is ‘a bit like trying to solve the Schleswig-Holstein question’ – the infamously complex 19th Century European border dispute. Lord Palmerston once said of that puzzle: ‘Only three people had a solution to it. One’s dead, the second’s gone mad and third’s forgotten.’ Don’t hold your breath on us triggering Article 50. MUTTERINGS of discontent reach me from the Tory backbenches, following the completion of Theresa May’s reshuffle. Several supporters of our new Prime Minister who were expecting plum jobs have found themselves empty-handed, with the finger of blame being pointed at new Chief Whip Gavin Williamson. ‘Theresa left the junior jobs to Gavin and he made a complete mess of it,’ one MP tells me. ‘He was supposed to reward her allies, and instead he gave jobs to all his drinking mates.’ With a Government majority of just 12, Williamson and May are going to have to massage some bruised egos when MPs return in the autumn. JOHN PRESCOTT’S recent attacks on Tony Blair over the Iraq War have raised the eyebrows of some former colleagues. One tells me: ‘A few of us were called in to see Tony and John a few hours before the vote on military action. Tony was exhausted and John did most of the talking. He said, “If we lose this vote Tony will be gone and the Government will be gone.” Then he banged his fist on the table and said, “Now get in there and do your duty!”’ Blessed are the peacemakers.