Great gag from the TUC. They played ‘Hey Big Spender’ as Jeremy Corbyn arrived to address their conference in Brighton. This was Stormin’ Corbyn’s first chance to reach beyond the Labour party and to address the nation. But he mentioned Britain only in the loosest terms.
‘The whole vision of those who founded the unions and founded our political parties was about doing things differently: that brilliant generation, those brilliant people who brought us the right to vote and brought women the right to vote.’
He meant the late Victorian campaigners who initiated trade unionism and gave birth to the Labour party. But he created the impression that he sees the UK only through the lens of left-wing activism.
It would be foolish to under-estimate him immediately. He revealed that 10,000 new members have joined the Labour party each day since the weekend. And many voters will respond to parts of his manifesto. Sorting the railways, dismantling the energy cartel, ending the PFI choke-hold on hospitals, boosting mental health provision. But Jezza doesn’t seem equipped to lead these great upheavals. He simply can’t communicate. Even here, at a rally of union devotees, he sounded as if he were telephoning Dominos to complain about a missing pizza.
His great pal, Tony Benn, was an orator of dazzling gifts. Yet Jezza, who shared a platform with Benn hundreds of times, learned nothing from the master. He has no urgency in his voice, no juice in his delivery – just a hint of irritation. He lacks polish entirely. But it’s worse than that. He lacks reading skills. He stumbles all the time and he seems unaware that these spoken errors suggest incompetence in other areas. His language is without colour, vivacity or humour. He has no stories to tell. Concision is alien to him.
He lumbers himself with great wordy thickets like this. ‘We have a job to do to understand the process that’s been going through at the moment in politics in Britain.’ He can’t coin a memorable sound-bite but he has a curious ability to make a promising idea entirely forgettable. His theme today was striking and catchy – ‘Think differently, think better’. But he converted it into a soggy meringue: ‘We can think differently and better.’ Where a moderately competent speaker might have roused the conference with, ‘these are the dreams we can turn into reality,’ Corbyn chose to say, ‘these things aren’t dreams, these things are practical realities we intend to achieve.’
Most intriguing was his approach to the years that lie ahead. He announced, in his flat and meandering way, that the 2020 campaign is already over. Victory is in the bag. ‘When we’ve been elected as a majority in 2020 we’ll repeal the [Trade Union] bill and replace it with a workers rights agenda’. No ifs or buts. ‘When we’ve been elected’. He repeated the result for those who hadn’t heard it the first time. ‘We’re going to win in 2020 and see the end of this Tory government.’
The conference responded ecstatically but Labour’s prime-minster-in-waiting seemed almost bored by it all.
Welcome to Snorin’ Corbyn.
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