I am not quite sure where David Cameron gets the idea that Jeremy Corbyn has “a Britain hating ideology”. To quote him in full, he said today at the Tory Party conference: “We cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.” He went on to attack Corbyn’s comment that the death of Osama bin Laden was “a tragedy”, which was Dodgy Dave at work again, using the quote completely put of contrast, because Corbyn went on to describe 9/11 and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq as “tragedies” too. Cameron added that Labour had given up on having “any sensible, reasonable, rational arguments on the economy. It’s not just that their arguments are wrong, it’s the self-righteous way they make them. Labour ideas don’t help the poor, they hurt the poor.” Let’s examine this in more detail.
Firstly, Corbyn doesn’t love this country any less than Cameron. He may have different policies, different beliefs and different principles than Cameron, but he is no less a patriot. But what Cameron has done is to exploit Corbyn’s past and present politics.
When Cameron refers to Corbyn’s “security-threatening”, he refers to his view that we should unilaterally disarm our nuclear weapons and, more significantly, that he would never press the button. If I am being honest, Cameron, in an act of naked politics, is actually onto something. Similarly, Cameron is not far out when he refers to “terrorist sympathising”. It is a matter of record that Corbyn has referred to Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” and that he had close links with Sinn Fein when their military wing was in armed conflict. He is on less firm ground with the “Britain-hating” slur, though. This probably has more to do with Corbyn’s failure to sing the national anthem and Cameron’s comment was meant to remind people of that. Promising to sing the national anthem has done Corbyn no favours.
Corbyn did refer to bin Laden’s death as “a tragedy”, regardless of what words followed. I felt then and I feel now that his death was anything but a tragedy and I find it hard to believe that anyone could regard the death of a terrorist as “a tragedy”.
Although Cameron’s attack on Labour – and it was much of an attack on Labour as it was Corbyn – was pretty full-on, it actually took up a very small part of his actual speech. The rest of it was more of Osborne’s theme of nakedly pitching their tent on Labour territory.
I would argue that here Cameron is being at best mischievous and at worse dishonest. “Labour ideas don’t help the poor, they hurt the poor,” he declares, without a hint of irony. The party that introduced working tax credits (Labour) and the party that slashed them (Conservatives). But this is part of Cameron and Osborne’s plan. It’s cunning, it’s cynical and it could just work.
Corbyn’s past will matter. It is not just the right wing media which will keep bringing it up, so will the public who, so far, have little knowledge about or interest in the new Labour leader. Thousands, we know, have been exhilarated by Corbyn’s alleged “new politics” but many millions more have been beyond the periphery. They are the silent majority who swing and win elections. He will need to address his past, quite probably over and over again because that is the way of politics. And I am not sure he will ever be able to undo his dalliances with islamic fascists in the middle east.
Rather than react to Cameron’s mudslinging, Labour should seek a new agenda that will energise the country. Under Miliband, and under Brown before him, no one really knew what Labour stood for. Corbyn has staked out a more left wing position, but there is no clue yet as to what a Corbyn Labour government would look like. You can argue that he’s only been leader for a few weeks and he has got five years and that’s true, but one of Miliband’s and Labour’s biggest blunders was to not counter the lie that Labour wrecked the world economy. In other words, if you allow the Tories to set the agenda and make the running, you may end up with too much to do.
Labour’s conference was a bit of a non-event. Corbyn’s clod-hopping speech, designed for those in the room, gave no clue as to what was to come. The Tories, stage-managed and ruthlessly spun, set out a clear vision of the where they are headed, a soft spoken, a smoke and mirrors rightward facing country that will see Labour obliterated if they succeed.
Corbyn is certainly different from what we are used to and that has its pluses and minuses. At the moment, the minuses are well on top and I don’t think an over-emphasis on his “new politics” will resonate with enough people anytime soon. We need big ideas and soon.
