Jeremy Corbyn has been Labour leader for less than 48 hours and the Conservative party is already managing to set the tone of the debate. In a piece for POLITICO Europe today, I look at how the Tories are feeling about Corbyn’s victory over the weekend and their plans to deal with it. Some MPs feel sad that Labour is no longer a serious party. ‘Saturday was a sad day for our country and the Labour Party — I am not laughing,’ says one influential Tory MP. ‘The party of Ramsay Macdonald, Clement Attlee, Harold Wilson and Tony Blair has now been reduced to Jeremy Corbyn’.
But any sorrow however is overwhelmed by jubilation that the next election appears to be in the bag for the Tories. While Corbyn is dodging the media — he has bailed out of appearances on the Marr show and the Today programme — the void is being filled by Conservatives, who are repeating the message over and over that he is a risk to Britain’s national and economic security.
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