Jeremy Corbyn: too chaotic to be PM?

“Dangerous. Incompetent. Chaotic with money.” Tom Bower’s new biography of Jeremy Corbyn, Dangerous Hero, proves that the Labour leader is “totally unfit for office”, said The Mail on Sunday. Corbyn’s “destructive socialist beliefs” and “long association with terrorists and anti-semites” are well known – but Bower’s “masterly evisceration” details for the first time “the full truth” about “this sorry excuse of a man”. Although born into privilege, he “grew up to hate the middle classes”. At his selective grammar school, he got only two A levels, both at grade E. He has been married three times, enjoying relationships “with a succession of younger women” – but for all his talk of equality, he seems to have expected his partners “to do all the chores”. He lived so frugally that he would frequently eat Tesco baked beans cold from the can. Yet at one point, he ran up so much debt he was advised to sell the family home. Bower’s verdict is clear: “Corbyn isn’t fit to be PM.”

But how damning are the revelations in this “upmarket hatchet job”, asked John Crace in GQ. Is it so terrible that Corbyn was “born to middle-class parents in Shropshire”, but has always been “a bit chippy” about it? That he underachieved at school? That he “liked to eat cold baked beans”, but “couldn’t tell the difference between Heinz and Tesco’s” beans? Bower’s book contains all sorts of compelling detail, but there is “no smoking gun”. It’s all a bit underwhelming – and a bit contradictory, said Matthew Norman in The Independent. The book claims “Jez has plotted ruthlessly for power”, yet it also reports that Corbyn “was on the brink of retiring to Wiltshire” when he “reluctantly agreed” to be the “ritual joke leadership candidate of the Left”. Reading this, you can’t help asking: what is Corbyn really being accused of?

Frankly, Corbyn has more to worry about than this kind of tittle-tattle, said The Times. His party is still being dogged by the issue of anti-semitism. There have been almost 700 cases of alleged anti-semitism in the past ten months, but only 12 members have been expelled. Meanwhile, the shadow cabinet is “so divided” over Brexit that it cannot seriously discuss it, said Toby Helm in The Observer. Corbyn’s recent letter offering conditions under which Labour would back the Prime Minister’s deal has caused “uproar”. There is “talk of breakaways”, with “at least” six MPS planning to resign. Party membership has fallen; Labour is seven points behind in the polls; and Corbyn’s ratings have “nosedived”. With all this going on, baked beans are the least of his worries.