Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy at the Edinburgh Festival 2022

The Edinburgh Festival gave Bram and Gareth a chance to attend interviews with Nichola Sturgen, Angela Rayner, Keir Starmer and Jeremy Corbyn. We deliberately avoided the current crop of  politicians in favour of Jeremy because we thought he might prove to be the most interesting. It was after all astonishing that an MP who had first served under Harold Wilson, a known left wing dinosaur, CND activist and close friend of Tony Benn should have recently become a leader of  the Labour Party.

Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Iain Dale. Iain is a former editor of Conservative Home, who gives an honest and  nuanced view of modern  Toryism when interviewed on Newsnight!

We were struck at once by Jeremy’s lack of pomposity, a gentle friendly demeanour without that actorish presence, that watchfulness, most politicians display. We realise they are trying to say, without words, that they are important and seeking to create an impression. No sign of that here, unless you think easy going directness with a sense of humour are themselves an act.

No questions were hostile. He flatly denied the rumour that he had in fact voted leave in 2016, or that voting remain meant his head had over-ruled his heart. Yes he had voted leave in 1974, but the social chapter added to the basic market and pro-corporate structure since then meant that Britain in a reformed Europe was better in than out.  He said the Party’s estimates were that about 25% of party members were for leave, and about 40% of Labour voters were for remain. It was obvious they needed an election strategy which would keep both camps on board, but they had not succeeded.

On anti-semitism he said yes, it had been expressed by some in the Party, and no, the party had not had effective mechanisms for rooting it out, but that he had instituted such a mechanism, formally distanced from his personal office, and this had been acknowledged by both investigations and reports into the matter.  He said emphatically that he had fought against racism all his life, and that it was obvious that included anti-Semitism.  He had seen no need to underline that separately, as if racism could only be about skin colour.

Subsequent to this statement in the interview, however, Jeremy, has been much more outspoken. He now claims that the long awaited Forde Report, recently published, has vindicated the approach he took to combat anti-semitism within the Labour party.  He also believes that factions within the party used the issue as an excuse to brief against him and remove him. Given the findings of the report he feels that the party whip should now be restored.

Ian asked whether in some circumstances politicians had to say one thing in order to get elected, and do something different when in power. To this Jeremy said a firm no: honesty and transparency were needed at every stage.

Asked whether he thought the party would have a socialist leader within ten years, he said he hoped so, and that there were some brilliant younger members of the party contributing impressive work in many areas of policy.  He mentioned a couple of people whose names we didn’t recognise, pointedly side-stepping the current shadow cabinet.

As for regrets, he said he wished he had moved faster to reform and democratise internal structures within the party; he spoke about an obstructive bureaucracy.  He added, matter of factly, that in his first year he had had to spend an inordinate amount of time heading off the attempt to unseat him as leader.

A theme throughout his answers was the desire to devolve and democratise decision-making, to empower communities, in direct opposition to the concentration of power in a few hands at Westminster. He said more than once that he had spent his career, and continued to spend it in his constituency, simply talking to ordinary people, finding out what their problems and their thoughts were.  As for fighting the next election, possibly as an independent member, he said diplomatically that if his constituents wanted him to go on, he would be glad to do so.

There was little cynicism, or knowingness, about his answers. We concluded  afterwards he just seemed too nice to be a politician; Gareth’s added that at times he was also perhaps too rigid, too uncompromising.  His insistence on being so ‘up front’ with his exact viewpoint had so easily allowed our hostile media to chip away and undermine him. While his obvious honesty and transparency was very laudable it is unfortunately a naive tactic in the cut and trust of todays political world.

When Corbyn first became leader we thought that either he would change the political game in Parliament, or the game would break him.  Clearly the latter happened. But one major way in which he DID change the game was to re-introduce the subject of inequality into debates about almost every aspect of British life.  He put the subject, its causes and its consequences, firmly back on the agenda. Levelling up was Boris’s response, deftly obscuring issues of class under those of the north-south divide.  We would add that culture wars can be seen as an attempt to shift the focus away from the economic facts.

We took the view, inequality is the single biggest driver of the new populism. Inequality in Britain, already second only to the United States among developed nations, is increasing, and social mobility is decreasing.  The way in which the contenders for the Tory leadership so openly promise to maintain existing structures of wealth and power could lead to civil unrest.  About this Corbyn is right – factually right, and morally right.  That he has been exiled from our political system tells you as much about that system as it does about him.  As the interview ended, the audience rose to give him a standing ovation – an overt expression of affection for a fundamentally decent man fighting for a fundamentally just cause.