The myth of Jeremy Corbyn, a kind and gentle man

I am relaxed about Jeremy Corbyn being thicker than mince but draw the line at the assumption, all too evidently held by most of his most devoted supporters, that you must be too. If Corbyn wishes to deny the obvious that is his prerogative; the notion you should be prepared to swallow any and every piece of whitewashing nonsense peddled by his fans is quite a different matter.

“I was present” when the wreath was laid “but I don’t think I was involved in it” is, I suppose, a step forward from the Labour party’s previous suggestion that “The Munich widows are being misled. Jeremy did not honour those responsible for the Munich killings”. (“Killings, incidentally, is an unusually coy way of referring to these things but we may as well agree to let that slide.) Holding a wreath should not be reckoned any kind of endorsement of the wreath; we know Jeremy deplores this kind of thing and, indeed, all other forms of wreath.

Hark, though, at how quickly the approved line may shift. What was a “smear” yesterday is a forgotten truth today, airbrushed from history because, well, because that’s the way these people do these things. Move along, nothing to see here. The old line has been wiped away, the new line is Jeremy wants to see “a fitting memorial to everyone who died in every terrorist incident everywhere”. I dare say he’ll be visiting Enniskillen soon. Of course.

And yet in one sense there really isn’t very much to look at. Or, rather, very little that is new. This is who Corbyn is and who he has always been. He has never previously bothered hiding this, leaving one to assume that he only does so now because there is some small, nagging, part of his brain which accepts it might be sensible to do so since failing to hide it might prove politically inconvenient.