The broadcast media tends to privilege this view of things, along with Corbyn-till-I-die posturing: the result, as evidenced by what happened on TV and radio last week, is the seemingly daily spectacle of backers of the leader duking it out with older, often jaded people who treat them and their politics as something almost beneath contempt.Īt which point, a reminder: four years ago, to his own evident shock, Corbyn raced ahead in the Labour leadership contest that followed the election defeat of 2015 for a set of clear and undeniable reasons. This view is often part of the kind of political restorationism lately manifested in nostalgia for the Tony Blair years, and the idea that if only we could go back to an unspecified time between 19, everything would be OK. All too often, anti-imperialists seem to keep the company of very rum people indeedįaced with all this, there is a continuing view, among some Labour MPs and party grandees, of Corbynism as something entirely irrational and aberrant – a shambling monster that took over the party thanks to a series of accidents, and has been sustained ever since via the mysterious magic of the internet. Woven into everything is the ever-widening story about antisemitism, which now includes signifiers for almost every aspect of the party’s malaise – from the presence in the party of hateful attitudes towards Jewish people, through allegations of the awful treatment of young party staffers by powerful people at the top, to the sense of any sensitivity and seriousness now being drowned out by the familiar sound of belligerence and faction-fighting. Obviously, the people at the top have other things on their minds. The party’s supposed leap forward on Brexit policy seems to have resulted in a stance not quite as bamboozling as the one it replaced, but it is still surrounded by unanswered questions the leadership’s dearth of collective energy as the agenda of a Boris Johnson government takes shape is miserable to behold. Jeremy Corbyn is doing a very good impression of someone who would rather be anywhere else. A fter a long tumble into disgrace and confusion that dates back well over a year, the story playing out at the top of the Labour party increasingly seems to be so dreadful that it defies belief.
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