I am already worn out by the interminable drag to the in/out EU referendum on 23 June. The lead up to and now the fall out from David Cameron’s announcement to head to the polls has bored me to tears. The predictable entrance into the debate by the narcissistic and ruthlessly ambitious Boris Johnson, amid the pretence he has been “agonising” over his decision, has turned the whole thing into a pantomime. And as ever the Tory Party is hopelessly divided. Things can only get worse for the Tory Party. The time is right for one man to come to the fore, to exploit and lay bare their divisions and put forward a powerful, compelling case to remain in Europe. That man is Jeremy Corbyn.
His closest friends will concede that Corbyn is not a great orator. In fact, he is a very poor orator, even when he is speaking with people who agree with him, which is when he makes most of his speeches. Today he will speak to many people who agree with him and, unusually, he will be on their side. He needs to do two things.
First, he needs to rip into the Tory Party in general and David Cameron in particular. He needs to raid the archive of past speeches by Cameron, Boris Johnson et al, to pick out the salient soundbites and use them against those on the opposite benches. We know that Corbyn does not like confrontation – a product of his pacifism, perhaps? – but he needs to confront Cameron. He needs to make everyone on the Tory benches squirm. He needs to set Tory against Tory, he needs to belittle Cameron’s so called deal and he needs to show that he has a forensic mind and an ability to think on his feet. He has shown neither of these qualities since becoming Labour leader. It is vital that today he does show them.
Second, he needs to set out clearly and concisely why it is better for Britain to remain in the EU. He has been right so far to point out that Cameron has been talking to Europe about things that don’t really matter and could have been dealt with in the normal turn of events instead of in one pointless negotiation in a few days. He was right to point out that the rights of ordinary working people should have been at the head of Cameron’s demands because they were not even part of Cameron’s aims. Corbyn needs to explain, hopefully with some never before seen passion, why British workers have a better deal in the EU rather than outside it. He cannot and must not just go through the motions.
Cameron will already been under immense pressure from his own side, most of whom oppose the very idea of even being in the EU. If Cameron had come back with a suitcase of money for everyone in the land, guaranteed good weather for ever and an agreement whereby Britain tells the EU what to do in every single instance about everything, those MPs would still oppose him.
One Tory MP argued this morning that rather than have so many EU migrants, we should get back to the Commonwealth. We needed more Indian people to work as chefs in restaurants and we should make it easier for other Commonwealth citizens to obtain visas to come here. She seemed to be saying that we should close the European open door and open it to citizens of the Commonwealth. Go figure out that one.
Today, Jeremy Corbyn needs to be an in their prime version of Tony Blair, Robin Cook and John Smith, both to belittle the petty Tories and to bolster Labour’s case to stay in. This is what the leader of the opposition is supposed to do and it’s time he showed, once and for all, whether he’s up to it.
