Weakness comes in many guises. Last night, for instance, I found myself feeling something close to pity for Jeremy Corbyn. Pictures of the House of Commons may be notoriously unreliable but they can still tell a story. And there it is: Corbyn Alone, Jeremy Agonistes, Jezza Contra Mundum. Mocked by his enemies and abandoned by his notional supporters, the question is no longer whether Jeremy Corbyn is a disaster for the Labour party but, rather, when his leadership will be put out of its misery.
Not for a while yet, I fancy, even though he hirples on like a blind, three-legged, cancer-stricken, dog. An object of pity not scorn.
Comparisons with Michael Foot are grotesque and grotesquely unfair to Mr Foot and not just because that was 1983 and this is 2015. Other comparisons are equally inappropriate. Iain Duncan Smith’s tenure as Tory leader was an unmitigated fiasco but, whatever his faults and delusions, he was recognisably tethered to the Conservative party’s right-wing; Corbyn, by contrast, is the leader of a left-wing faction that hates the Labour party just as much as it despises the Conservatives.
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