Marxist Moments

CORBYN IN SIGHTS
(corrected 14.2.19)

           One has been expecting a general onslaught upon Jeremy Corbyn from the mainstream media for some time, especially since charges that he was a Czech spy during the Cold War, that he has been friendly with (Leftwing) dictators and supported IRA terrorism during the Troubles seem not to have stuck, alas, for lack of proof. And because these charges fly in the face of all that we know of Corbyn’s long career in politics.

          His rabid anti-Semitism has also failed to take hold (especially since he appears to have celebrated Seder last year with constituency Jews) for  the Right-wing Press can never quite decide whether he wields sinister dictatorial powers within Labour or is too weak to combat the insidious anti-Semitism in which the Party is saturated. Since the anti-Corbyn tendency could never quite determine the answer to this conundrum the anti-Semitism story has thrived and waned and thrived again depending on how desperate the Labour Right is to get rid of Corbyn.

          Apparently the Labour Party became controlled by a vicious cabal of anti-Semites when Ed Miliband – a Jew – was elected its leader prior to Jeremy’s succession. At that time the Press made great play with Ed’s apparent inability to eat a bacon sandwich (it is understood that Jews are forbidden to eat pork, so this was quite 'funny')  while Ed’s late father Ralph Miliband (respected Marxist scholar and a former Belgian refugee from Nazism) was emblazoned in Daily Mail headlines as ‘the enemy of Britain’.

          With the collapse of all faith in Mrs May’s zombie Tory government and thus an increasing likelihood that Labour under Corbyn may well come to power, sooner or later, it has finally come time for the Press to unleash the dogs of war on him and throw everything at him that they can possibly find. And so the Mail on Sunday, for 10^th February 2019. In page after page of diatribe we find, amongst other things, that his two ex-wives have a very low opinion of him and his ‘joylessness’ – which according to commentators makes him poor prime ministerial material. One wife said he once forced her to spend a night in a tent, which surely disbars him from any further participation in politics.  And he insisted on a family outing to visit Marx’s grave at Highgate Cemetery: an odd and inhumane thing for a lifelong and dedicated socialist to want to do.

          I would hate to think what any ex’es of mine would have said about me in retrospect; I don’t suppose on the whole that ex-husbands and ex-wives come off well in marital recollection, or their ex-spouses wouldn’t have divorced them. The fact that Jeremy has long been happily married to a third wife and has three fine adult sons who love him is not mentioned in this trashing expedition in the Mail. Are these denunciations the best the Mail can come up with? There must be a lot of cleanly-scraped barrel bottoms stored somewhere.

          As for his ‘joylessness’, I don’t see Theresa May as a barrel of laughs, either, which is part of her problem in politics. Even an entrance of dancing at the last Tory Conference did not exactly result in offers from ‘Strictly’. But we could hardly call Tony Blair or David Cameron joyless. On the contrary, they proved to be urbane, able to speak with easy empathy, personable, jokey and to be one of the chaps, as well as having a reasonable dress-sense and able to use the right cutlery at the annual Lord Mayor’s Mansion banquet. And what Prime Ministers! Still, it is not a proper comparison since Jeremy is not yet a Prime Minister.

          Then I got to thinking: which Prime Minister would we most have liked being married to? Margaret Thatcher? Apart from the devoted Denis and the besotted late Alan Clark I should imagine the majority of male voters, whatever their politics, would have shrunk back from such a prospect. Edward Heath? This confirmed and grouchy bachelor would scarcely seem love’s young dream. What about the philandering David Lloyd George? Or indeed Winston Churchill – not a philanderer but he drank too much and must have been a pain to live with, as the subsequent histories of his children (if not the ‘treasure’ Clemmie herself) would seem to confirm. The Mail on Sunday also accuses Jeremy of being wholly incompetent over his own finances, thus hardly likely to steer the nation to prosperity. We might rejoin that at the least he has been presenting honest and straightforward books to HMRC and is one of the few politicians who even informs the public of what taxes he actually pays. Again, in contrast to Churchill, whose extravagance was not held back by constant threats of bankruptcy and who had to labour mightily to keep a jump or two ahead of the bailiffs. Prime Ministerial material? Forget it!

          Worst of all, perhaps, Jeremy Corbyn cannot, it seems, distinguish the taste between Heinz baked beans and other brands!

          What kind of person can pretend to be the leader of this great country who cannot tell the difference between different sorts of baked beans?

          Well, let’s see how far this devastating onslaught hits home.