Isabel Hardman Isabel Hardman

Labour MPs in despair at Corbyn’s ‘poor’ response to defence review

Labour MPs have had plenty of opportunities over the past few weeks to look miserable. But today the party looked its most miserable ever as Jeremy Corbyn responded to David Cameron’s statement on the Strategic Defence and Security Review. Even the frontbenchers, particularly Tom Watson, looked unhappy. Andy Burnham looked even more doleful than usual. On the backbenches, MPs such as Dan Jarvis and Caroline Flint wore masks of agony. Chris Leslie had his arms crossed defensively, looking miserable. Diane Abbott appeared to be a little snoozy. Helen Goodman was slumped in her seat in what appeared to be despair. Labourites afterwards described the response as ‘poor’.

It was poor: Corbyn managed to spend the opening section responding to a different statement on policing, not the one the Commons had just heard. He criticised the government’s plans to cut the police before complaining about what had been left out of the review: inequality, poverty, disease, human rights abuses, climate change and water and food security, or indeed the flow of arms and illicit funds. Tory MPs were chuckling at this point, and Corbyn broke off to scold them, which may have helped him to look a little more authoritative than he was (something I look at in my Times column today), but the truth was that he’d lost the House.

Some of his demands showed what one Labour MP who I spoke to afterwards described as a ‘refusal to engage with the strategic questions’. This quote sums the Labour leader’s more peripheral approach up nicely:

‘We have highly professional and experienced diplomats, some of the best in the world, as well as world-class peace and conflict research academics. Does he not agree that the severe cut in the Foreign Office budget is clear evidence of his government’s determination to sacrifice our place in the world on the altar of misplaced austerity? Will he commit to a human rights adviser in every embassy?’

It was easy for Cameron to bat away that point about human rights advisers by saying this is what ambassadors should do.

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