Me and my selfie with Jeremy
He got hauled in by leader after his MoS columns. The result? His best one yet!
REBEL Labour MP Simon Danczuk yesterday announced that he is ready to mount a ‘stalking horse’ challenge to get rid of Jeremy Corbyn. Mr Danczuk has castigated the Labour leader in a series of articles in The Mail on Sunday. The MP was duly summoned to Mr Corbyn’s office on Wednesday and expected a dressing down. That is not quite what happened, as he reveals in his latest MoS dispatch...
IN MY 25-year career in politics I’ve had many memorable meetings with Ministers, mandarins, police, victims of child sexual abuse and others. But nothing prepared me for the extraordinary 40-minute, one-to-one meeting I had with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn last week.
I had been invited to see him after criticising his performance in a series of articles in The Mail on Sunday. A Labour peer had waved a copy of my article in last week’s edition at Monday’s meeting of the Parliamentary Labour Party, calling for me to be disciplined.
So you can understand why, when I knocked on the door of Jeremy’s office at 4pm on Wednesday, I did so with a degree of trepidation.
Was he going to throw me out of the party merely for saying in public what other Labour MPs say in private about his leadership? Would it be the start of the great purge of Labour moderates by the Trots and Stalinists in his backroom team that we keep reading about?
The first surprise is his office: Jeremy has abandoned the vast suite used by Ed Miliband and is ensconced in a modest study no bigger than the ones enjoyed by most humble backbenchers. Very hairshirt.
There’s modern art on the walls, plus a ‘Women – Vote Labour For The Children’s Sake’ poster.
He greets me in his trademark beige slacks, jacket and open-neck yellow shirt, though there’s a smart blue suit and tie hung up on the door – presumably the one he wore a couple of hours earlier at Prime Minister’s Questions.
I can’t help thinking how little it would take to make him look really smart. He could lose the straggly beard, for a start.
He offers a warm handshake and asks about my recent split with my wife, saying: ‘I know what it’s like, I’ve been through divorce a couple of times. The first time I married we were both too young.’
The pleasantries over, we get down to business. I tell him my main problem with him is that he just doesn’t seem to understand that his brand of hard-Left politics may go down well in the trendy salons of Islington, North London, where he is MP, but they go down like a lead balloon in Northern towns such as Rochdale, which I represent.
I remind him that he recently said immigration was not an issue: that’s not how they see it in Rochdale. When I tell him the town is home to 1,000 asylum seekers – more than the whole of the South East – he doesn’t seem to believe me. ‘Really?’ he asks. I assure him it’s true. When I say that about one in four of my constituents has roots in Pakistan, Kashmir and Bangladesh, he says ‘great’ and his eyes light up.
To him it’s a multicultural cause for celebration. He doesn’t see the sensitive issues of social cohesion it brings with it. Nor does he recognise how the pace and scale of immigration is deeply unsettling for many communities.
I tell him Labour must be tougher on those who abuse the welfare system, or, as they say in Lancashire, swing the lead. He discreetly moves the conversation on to Tory cuts of tax credits.
We agree they are a disgrace. He has just tackled David Cameron on the subject during Prime Minister’s Questions and is delighted with how he is doing in PMQs.
Quite right: I tell him he’s getting better each week. But he had Cameron on the ropes over tax credits and should have gone for the kill instead of changing the subject. He listens thoughtfully.
He’s especially excited by the way he’s handling Tory hecklers. ‘Do you see what I do? I stop and stare at them.’
I tackle him about another of my gripes – his refusal to sing the National Anthem or bow to the Queen. Patriotic Labour voters don’t like it.
THE previous evening he’d suppressed his republican zeal and donned white tie and tails for the state banquet at Buckingham Palace in honour of China’s President Xi Jinping. He clearly hadn’t relished the experience: ‘Oh God, it was one of the most boring nights I have ever had.’
Jeremy is not given to histrionics. But that isn’t to say he’s a man without ire: more than once I felt his cold stare, the curled eyebrow of disapproval, the chilly tone of voice.
Back on tax credits, he says Labour could defeat the Tories on the issue in the Lords tomorrow, then adds diffidently: ‘Then again, we might not.’
I’m reminded again of this quirkiness when we discuss another of my concerns: his lack of interest in business. Before I get the chance to explain why Labour must recognise business as a powerful engine of social mobility, he goes off at a tangent, talking about how the Unite union allows small businesses to join it. I’m puzzled, but after a while realise that he’s talking about black cab drivers, who qualify as self-employed. I’m all for black cab drivers, but they’re not the first thing most of us think of when discussing entrepreneurs.
I get the same feeling when he suddenly starts complaining about how his local falafel shop pays more tax than the Starbucks over the road. Obviously he has a good point, but as usual it’s argued from a multicultural fringe perspective.
I wonder if he’ll get behind other small businesses with the same passion he shows for falafel sellers.
His diary secretary pops in to remind us we’re near the end of our allotted time. When she disappears, Jeremy makes a great show of saying what a marvellous, hard-working person she is. Rather patronising, I reflect. But it’s as though he thinks I will be impressed at how egalitarian he is to compliment a junior member of his staff. I’m not.
I’m more interested in two other members of his retinue who have made wild statements over the years, such as Seumas Milne, his new head of strategy.
‘What did Seumas say?’ asks Jeremy blithely. So I tell him: following the murder of soldier Lee Rigby in Woolwich in 2013, Milne said it ‘wasn’t terrorism in the normal sense’. Jeremy winces.
I continue: ‘Lee Rigby came from the constituency next door to mine. Do you realise how offended those constituents will be by you giving a job to a man like Milne?’ He replies: ‘Seumas is a good guy. He won’t be saying anything like that any more.’ What about his new political adviser Andrew Fisher, who called Ed Miliband’s Shadow Cabinet a ‘collection of absolute sh***?’
Jeremy grimaces: ‘Andrew is very intelligent and has a lot to offer.’
I am wholly unconvinced and tell him: ‘Appointments like that will haunt you for as long as you are leader.’ Keen to end on a positive note, I say, half joking: ‘How about posing for a selfie?’ ‘Sure,’ says Jeremy gamely.
I depart with mixed emotions. There’s no question Jeremy is a decent bloke and I admire him for having the courage to listen to my criticisms.
UNLIKE the decidedly distasteful characters who have attached themselves to his coat tails, Jeremy is warm, well-meaning and sincere. I’d go further: I like the guy and would happily share a falafel and green tea with him. It’s not hard to see why he won the leadership contest: there’s a refreshing openness about him.
But, unfortunately, politics is about much more than that. And as someone who desperately wants a Labour government, we need a leader who can win a General Election, not parliamentary beard of the year.
What worries me is that there is a profound lack of judgment and naiveté about Jeremy, and he’s on such a short ideological tether he’s never going to reach out beyond activists. He’s not going to grow into a ‘father of the nation’ figure; he’s more likely to be viewed as an outof-touch uncle.
Spending 40 minutes with him has not changed my view: he is unsuited to leading a major political party and the sooner we get a Labour leader who is, the better.
At no point during our conversation did Jeremy say I should not speak about our meeting. Strangely, he didn’t even mention my articles in The Mail on Sunday.
As Jeremy says, welcome to the new politics.