Is Piers Corbyn really dangerous?

I thought the police statement — bureaucratic, anonymised, bone-dry – got the tone just right. In confirming the arrest of Piers Corbyn on suspicion of encouragement to commit arson, a spokesman confirmed only that ‘a man in his 70s’ had been arrested in Southwark, south London on Sunday morning.

This, for those who missed it, is understood to relate to Mr Corbyn’s fire-breathing (literally: he took his nylon-clad life in his hands with a stunt involving lighter-fluid) speech to an anti-vax rally in the capital. He told his audience, presumably once he’d had a Murray Mint to get the taste of the lighter fluid out of his mouth, that we needed to ‘get a bit more physical’ with those who support restrictions designed to reduce the number of people dying of Covid. He called on his supporters to ‘hammer to death those scum who have decided to go ahead with introducing new fascism’, adding: 

‘We’ve got to get a list of them … and if your MP is one of them, go to their offices and, well, I would recommend burning them down, OK. But I can’t say that on air. I hope we’re not on air.’

Needless to say that’s despicable – though it is; not least the creepily preening coda: 

‘But I can’t say that on air. I hope we’re not on air.’ 

And in an environment where MPs now routinely face death threats, and more than one has in recent memory been murdered, it is dangerous incitement. But it’s not exactly the speech of a terrorist mastermind. ‘I hope we’re not on air,’ says the man addressing a public meeting in the centre of London.

Piers Corbyn is your basic malign, flappy-trousered old loony, jumpy with conspiracies and self-aggrandising notions of resistance, of the sorry sort you can find in any given flat-roofed pub in the country, or handing out misspelt leaflets outside the offices of the local council after falling into dispute with them about the bin collections. Why were we ever paying any attention to him in the first place?

In truth, he has been raised to prominence not by his supporters but by those who, if they held him in less contempt, would qualify as his enemies. This is symptomatic of the wretched state of a public discourse in which we think it’s enough to straw-man positions we oppose by seeking out their most woebegone representatives. Piers Corbyn had two turns in the barrel here.

First, he was a convenient punchbag for those on the right who thought it might make the former Labour leader look, as if it were needed, more ridiculous by associating him with the antics of an embarrassing sibling. In this he joins a long tradition that included Terry Major-Ball, Roger Clinton and Barack Obama’s Trump-supporting half-brother Malik.

Then, once Covid got him all excited, he served his metonymic purpose for metropolitan liberal wear-your-mask-with-pride types. Look, we said: here’s the face of the anti-lockdown, anti-vax movement: a whiskery shouter in public places, a mutterer about Soros and a sharer of platforms with David Icke. Corbyn is a man who can be comically easily pranked by YouTubers into appearing to accept a bribe from big Pharma – in short, someone who can’t walk down the street without spilling the rancid contents of his mental picnic hamper onto the pavement, undercatered sandwich provision and all.

But even if, like me, you think the arguments against covid restrictions and vaccination are badly wrongheaded, basic intellectual self-respect compels you to admit that there’s more to them than Piers and his hangers-on shambling through a tube carriage chanting tunelessly about farts and trousers. It’s easy and fun to ridicule him, but Corbyn isn’t representative of any serious political argument so much as he is of a particular psychological deformation. And I dare say – since I think you can detect a private rage, a personal thwartedness, bubbling under the conspiratorial mindset — that that deformation is made worse by the public attention it craves.

Those vengeful ranting fantasies of violence — which will be bubbling in the minds of many like him – would have no real reach or seriousness were he not platformed in the way he has been. He’s dangerous in proportion to the attention he is paid. 

Piers Corbyn has done two rather different but equally cynical constituencies a favour just by being himself. We should do him, and public life, a reciprocal kindness now by leaving him to be himself in private. Needn’t be a jail cell, though many will think he might benefit from seeing the inside of one. If you’re Piers Corbyn I should think anywhere is a jail cell.