Portrait of a man who could today be leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition
HE could be a grandfather popping down to the garden centre for some compost.
But by the time you’re reading this, the 66-year- old man in the striped polo shirt, baggy shorts, black socks and black Nike trainers could be the new leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition.
Labour sources last night conceded Jeremy Corbyn’s bid to succeed Ed Miliband seemed to be ‘unstoppable’.
The prospects of a Corbyn victory solidified yesterday as the contest to be Labour’s London mayoral candidate confirmed he had inspired a massive left-wing surge.
Blairite former minister Tessa Jowell had started the contest as clear favourite. But she was swept aside as the socalled ‘Corbyn Army’ flexed its muscles to install left-winger Sadiq Khan.
Supporters of shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper last night insisted she retained faint hopes of victory. But rivals Andy Burnham and Liz Kendall appeared to have thrown in the towel.
The surge of support for Mr Corbyn means the Marxist throwback is on course to be facing David Cameron at Prime Minister’s Questions in the Commons on Wednesday, where he will be required to wear a jacket and tie.
But, as he put the finishing touches to his shadow cabinet yesterday, Mr Corbyn declined to engage in power dressing. Decked out in his shorts and trainers he looked set to be the party’s most sartorially-challenged leader since Michael Foot.
Mr Cameron last night warned that Mr Corbyn seemed determined to drag political debate back to the 1980s.
‘You need a good Opposition to hold the Government to account,’ he said.
‘I just hope we have an Opposition where we are not going back to a whole lot of arguments that I thought we dealt with in the 1980s about it being time to nationalise half of British industry or get rid of our nuclear deterrent. These are arguments I thought we had dealt with and I thought our country was stronger for having a Labour Party and a Conservative Party who violently disagreed about lots of things but accepted a f ree enterprise economy, strong defence, trade unions under the law, not nationalising everything in sight, trying to keep tax rates low.
‘I think the country is stronger when you have shared objectives rather than when you’ve got someone who wants to take us back to the days of Michael Foot and Arthur Scargill.’
Mr Corbyn is expected to launch his leadership today with an appeal for party unity after a bitter leadership contest. But many MPs are already openly questioning why they should show loyalty to a maverick Left-winger who has rebelled against his own party more than 500 times.
Mr Corbyn’s anti-austerity message has electrified the contest and helped produce a huge surge in party membership. But critics fear his hard-Left manifesto will amount to electoral suicide with the wider public.
His policies include a seven pence hike in national insurance contributions on middle income families, the nationalisation of the utilities and ordering the Bank of England to print tens of billions of pounds of new money to pay for investment. He also wants to pull out of Nato, scrap Trident and ditch the United States as an ally in favour of Vladimir Putin’s Russia. He is also accused of cosying up to Palestinian terrorists and the IRA.
Half the existing shadow cabinet are poised to quit immediately if Mr Corbyn wins today. An announcement is expected around midday.
Mr Burnham, who began the leadership race as favourite, is tipped for a senior frontbench role after saying he would serve. But he faced embarrassment yesterday after he was secretly recorded by an undercover Sun reporter warning that Mr Corbyn would be ‘a disaster for the Labour Party’.
‘Back to the days of Michael Foot’