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. Michael Fallon made this point in a statement on Saturday, Michael Gove repeated it on Sunday and a new video (watch above) has been released today with the same message.
Conservative HQ will be doing their utmost to fill the airwaves this week with negative stories about Corbyn and the risks his administration would bring. But the party’s leadership will be not painting him as some kind of nutty throwback from the 1970s. As the video above shows, the Conservatives’ tone throughout Corbyn’s leadership will be grave. ‘If we want to be taken seriously, we need to act seriously,’ says a No.10 source.
Once the Tories have shone an initial light into the unconventional world of Corbyn, I understand that their efforts become more of a slow drip. While there is a need to get ahead of Labour right now, there is also a danger that too much political capital is wasted now when the general election is five years away. So far, Corbyn’s media strategy has been non-existant/abysmal. By ignoring the outside world, the image of Corbyn in people’s minds from the first few days of his leadership is of a dangerous man. If he doesn’t attempt to counteract it soon, he may never be able to shrug it off.
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