Nick Tyrone Nick Tyrone

Starmer has exposed Corbyn the coward

(Getty images)

Being a radical feels nice. You get to think you’re a morally superior being in a society full of evil-doers and sell outs. You can reduce the world to easily understandable, fixable problems. You get to reframe everything in life as good versus evil with you as the hero of the story. The only problem? It’s all a mirage. Human societies are complex and fixing them even more so. Affecting actual change requires compromise, both with others and with yourself. More than that, it takes courage – a courage that Keir Starmer is already demonstrating in his leadership of the Labour party. And one which was woefully lacking during Jeremy Corbyn’s time at the top.

Describing Corbyn as a coward is about the worst thing you can do in the eyes of his supporters – sure, call him incompetent if you must, but a coward? The man who stood up against the system for all those decades? But Corbyn’s lack of courage was not only an ongoing feature of his leadership but also an unspoken element in his political downfall.

Corbyn’s relationship with the media is a good place to start. Every Labour leader finds it tough out there, with a print media in Britain that is slanted rightward. Yet Corbyn chose, right from the start, not to even bother giving it a try. Instead of even attempting to engage with the mainstream press in any meaningful way, he mostly stuck to what he knew, which were grassroots leftist outlets with little reach. Again, some Labour leftists would describe this as some form of purity on Corbyn’s part. They might claim that the mainstream media were all against him from the start anyhow. In reality, he was just running away from the fight.

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Nick Tyrone
Written by
Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone is a former director of CentreForum, described as 'the closest thing the Liberal Democrats have had to a think tank'. He is author of several books including 'Politics is Murder'

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