The protest that greeted Jacob Rees-Mogg’s talk at a Bristol university on Friday night shows that something sinister is happening in British politics, according to today’s newspaper editorials.
The Times says that while Jeremy Corbyn’s ‘younger admirers’ might be blind to the idea, the Labour party and Corbyn’s ‘personal brand are tainted with an ugly and retrograde thuggishness’. The paper says the experiences of Claire Kober, the outgoing Labour leader of Haringey council, is a case in point. Kober used an interview in the Times on Saturday to document her experiences at the hands of some of Corbyn’s followers. It seems clear, says the paper, that while Corbyn is ‘riding the wave’ of ‘youthful idealism’, he also owes his success partly to the ‘revival of Bennite bullying, often laced with misogyny and antisemitism’. This type of politics should have been ‘buried’ back in the 1980s, the Times says. If Jeremy Corbyn is ‘serious about driving the Conservatives from power and building a socialist paradise in Britain, he will have to clean house first’. ‘Bullying, antisemitism, misogyny and questionable judgments on the use of public money have no place in opposition, never mind in government,’ the paper concludes.
Politics is certainly turning nasty, says the Daily Telegraph. The furious protesters who tried to shut down Jacob Rees-Mogg from speaking ‘were the latest example of a politician facing intimidation and bullying’. This ‘targeting’ of politicians – particularly ‘of women MPs and candidates’ – ‘is reaching epidemic proportions’. It is true that this sort of abuse does, to an extent, go with the territory, the Telegraph concedes. After all, ‘political discourse can easily become heated’. Yet ‘it is when it strays into something worse that the line needs to be drawn’, the Telegraph says. The Prime Minister has proposed one solution: a new law to prevent the intimidation of those running for parliament. But there is a danger that this legislation could overstep the mark and ‘easily be used to close down legitimate debate’. Instead, it is usually best to take the approach of Rees-Mogg, and ‘stand up to’ those trying to disrupt political debate. After all, it is important to remember that such a group ’are a small minority who will find no wider support’.
But the Sun goes further, calling the Labour party under Jeremy Corbyn a ’hotbed of toxic Trots’. The paper points to shocking reports that unsavoury elements have been welcomed back into the party. To make matters worse, the protest at Rees-Mogg’s talk by ‘balaclava-wearing hard-Left thugs’, shows that Corbyn’s supporters clearly now ‘feel entitled to disrupt Tory MPs speaking at universities’. ‘“Moderate” Labour MPs and Labour voters will denounce all of this’, the paper predicts. Yet such criticism is ‘meaningless’. When it comes to a general election, these same moderates will fall in line behind Corbyn ‘and stand as MPs for his party. While voters will support the party at the polls. For as long as they do, they are all guilty by association,’ the Sun concludes.
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