Corbyn shows his true colours

The Tories’ great worry after the last election was that they had effectively vaccinated the electorate against Jeremy Corbyn. They feared that the next time they tried to show that he was extreme, weak on national security and too friendly with the West’s enemies, voters would yawn and declare that they had heard it all before. They would be immune to any attacks on the Labour leader. Compounding this worry was the fear that Corbyn would present himself, as he had quite successfully during the general election campaign, as a more mainstream figure than he really is.

If Corbyn had followed this ‘kindly grandad’ approach, the Conservatives would be in deep trouble right now. Labour’s moderates would also lack any obvious cause for complaint. Every government mistake, such as the appalling treatment of the Windrush generation immigrants, could be used by Labour to chip away at Theresa May and the Tories’ credibility. The old saw about governments losing elections rather than oppositions winning them would apply.

But Corbyn can’t give up, or even hide, the anti-western worldview that has motivated his entire political career. Which is why the past few weeks have been so damaging for him. After the Skripals had been poisoned in Salisbury, but before Theresa May had formally pointed the finger of blame at Russia, shadow chancellor John McDonnell suggested that Labour MPs should stop appearing on Russia Today. This was a sensible response to the station’s desperate attempts to divert blame away from Moscow. It would have put much-needed distance between Labour and a TV channel that Corbyn and his allies had been all too willing to appear on in the past.

Given that it was McDonnell who ran Corbyn’s leadership campaign, you’d have thought that the Labour leader would have taken this advice on board. But his office instead felt the need to stress that Labour would not boycott the channel.