At last . . . a clear choice in this Hall of Mirrors Election

SHORTLY after Theresa May conducted her rubber-scalding U-turn on social care, a regular follower of mine tweeted asking how I now intended to vote. When I replied I would still be voting Conservative, she responded: ‘So you’re going to vote for May just because you don’t like how Jeremy Corbyn wears his tie.’

On Friday morning, Corbyn was wearing a very smart, sober black tie as he entered the Institution of Civil Engineers to deliver his speech directly linking British foreign policy with the Manchester terror attack. Mourning black, rather than Islamic State black.

Political analysis is always hard in the wake of an atrocity like the concert bombing. But thankfully, Labour’s leader has made it easier. As Tory chiefs were debating the appropriate way to restart their stalled campaign, his own strategists had no qualms. They would attack Theresa May for being weak on terror.

They didn’t set it out quite so blatantly, of course. Their analysis ‘in no way reduces the guilt of those who attack our children’, Corbyn said, smoothly ending the electoral truce, before adding: ‘I do not want to make a narrow party political point.’ He then proceeded to make police cuts, overseas adventurism, crumbling prisons and draconian anti - t error l aws complicit in Salman Abedi’s murderous rampage. And then he delivered the line that will come to define his speech: ‘The blame is with the terrorists, but if we are to protect our people we must be honest about what threatens our security.’

The blame i s with the terrorists, but…

This Election campaign has been conducted in a hall of mirrors. Issues have drifted into view, become distorted, then vanished. Brexit, the economy, the deficit, the NHS, pensions, social care. But finally there is clarity. Two people stand reflected – Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May. Behind them, sinister figures are lurking. The 2017 Election has been redacted to this. Up until now it’s been crass to draw such a seemingly simplistic comparison as ‘it’s a straight choice between May and Corbyn’. What about the policies, what about their competing visions for Britain? It can’t just be about his tie.

It was never about his tie. On Friday, my wife and son were due to attend an Ariana Grande concert at the O2 arena. When people target – don’t simply murder, but deliberately target – children, I expect my Prime Minister to say ‘the blame is with the terrorists’, and then stop.

Jeremy Corbyn has never been able to stop. The IRA. Hamas. Presented with their crimes, the moral clarity with which he condemns racially motivated attacks on Muslims, or once condemned the per- ceived excesses of British troops in Northern Ireland, suddenly deserts him. Last Sunday, asked to unequivocally condemn the IRA’s bombing campaign, his instinctive response was: ‘No, I think what you have to say is all bombing has to be condemned and you have to bring about a peace process.’

But again, until the barbaric events of last Monday night, this sophistry had been airily dismissed. Corbyn’s past relationships – and his reluctance to disown them – were an unfortunate but abstract presentational problem.

Not now. Not after he has looked the country in the eye and said: ‘Do not doubt my determination to take whatever action is necessary to keep our country safe.’ The country does doubt it. And it should. To judge Corbyn’s willingness to keep us and our families safe, we need to look at other words and actions. The words he spoke and actions he took before the horrors of Manchester. He voted against authorising RAF strikes against IS in Syria, and said attacks against them in Iraq should be ‘reviewed’. He said he would not support a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy to prevent a Bataclan-style massacre. He has said he opposes extending anti-terror legislation. And believes the Prevent initiative is counterproductive. Corbyn says that as Premier, he would take any action to protect the nation, but in practice he has opposed every action designed to protect the nation.

AND now, thanks to Corbyn himself, the nation can see it. He could have restarted t he c a mpaign by pivoting back to the ‘ dementia tax’, or the NHS. But spurred on by his Stop The War acolytes, he wrapped himself in the bloodied-shroud of the war on terror. And unwittingly framed t he choice before t he British people.

In the short term their reaction to his speech may actually be positive. The narrative that we should ‘keep out of other people’s fights’ is seductive. But in two weeks’ time it will have been replaced by a simple question – when the next Salman Abedi is in the RAF’s sights, which of the two candidates for PM is most likely to pull the trigger?

Out beyond the liberal enclave of Islington, Labour MPs know the answer. As one told me: ‘The British public will forgive Theresa May for U-turning on social care, or getting her sums wrong on school meals. But they won’t forgive Jeremy Corbyn for giving comfort to Britain’s enemies at home and abroad, both historically and now amidst the carnage of Manchester.’

Once such emotive l anguage would have been effectively dismissed by Corbynites as a smear. But not today. Jeremy Corbyn has defined the choice on June 8. And it has nothing to do with his tie.