If Jeremy Corbyn set out in his Marr interview to reassure his critics in the Labour Party that this is the beginning of a new era for the leadership and the wider party, he didn’t do a great job.
The Labour leader refused to rule out mandatory reselection of his MPs, saying that most of them would be fine. He ‘wished them well’ and said:
‘Let’s have a democratic discussion and I think the vast majority of MPs will have no problem whatsoever.’
Perhaps to some, that sounded reassuring. But what it actually says to the handful of MPs facing battles in their seats, such as Peter Kyle and Stella Creasy, is that the leader won’t protect them and they somehow brought this on themselves.
The last section of the interview, on defence, also showed that Corbyn is going to stick to his guns on policy areas that the public seriously disagrees with him on. He said he didn’t think the defence budget should go up, and made unsupportive noises about expanding MI6.
Most moderate MPs yesterday chose to greet Corbyn’s return with a qualification that he needed to promise to protect them against intimidatory deselection campaigns and show voters that he was capable of leading the country and protecting its security. These were, of course, tests that those MPs expected Corbyn not to meet. And he hasn’t.
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