Mick Hartley

Why doesn't Jeremy Corbyn do us all a favour and disappear from the political scene? He was a disaster as Labour leader, and the party's still struggling to recover some measure of respectability under the steady but dull leadership of Keir Starmer. As long as Corbyn remains he acts as a magnet for the disaffected left in the party who share the man's own deluded view of himself as a martyr who's never been wrong about anything, and alone among our politicians maintains a moral purity of vision.

Suzanne Moore in the Telegraph:

Part of the hype was the ‘right side of history’ argument. He had always been on it; he had never been wrong. Perhaps this is why, like Boris Johnson, he can never actually apologise. That is why, in 2020, the whip was withdrawn from him by Sir Keir Starmer: Corbyn would not apologise for saying that the Equality and Human Rights Commission’s report into anti-Semitism in his Labour Party “had been dramatically overstated for political reasons”. Starmer, referred to by Corbyn’s supporters as “Keith”, just as Blair is always “Bliar” (eat your heart out, Oscar Wilde), would not back down. Corbyn now sits as an independent MP.

Now, in Islington North, there are moves to deselect him. There has been some talk (from his wife and others) of him forming his own political party. There is no doubt that is he a good and popular constituency MP.

He's my constituency MP, and I beg to differ. But yes, if he did stand at the next election as an independent against an official Labour candidate I've no doubt he'd win, such is the mysterious admiration for him here in rainy north Islington.

But his presence – neither inside, nor outside Labour – is a problem. The union Unite backs him, and could withdraw its significant funding to the Labour Party if he were deselected. Who would want to stand against him? Would his local party branch even go along with this?

All of this is a nightmare, but one that has a very simple solution. This man is 72, and will be 74 at the time of the next election. Corbyn could as most people do and retire. Is he in denial? I wondered that when he appeared in the House of Commons at the beginning of the pandemic, a time when his age group was told to be particularly careful. What made him think himself invincible – vegetarianism?

His supporters, often young and idealistic, saw in him a moral purity and refusal to compromise, whereas I only ever saw a stubborn arrogance and creeping narcissism. Sure, he energised the Labour Party, and there were many good things in his manifestos – but he always embodied a fossilised version of socialism that simply does not speak to most people’s everyday lives.

Even now, he sees the Ukraine crisis as primarily the fault of Nato. His comrades-in-arms see the destabilisation in that region coming from the expansion of Nato. Are these people serious? I am afraid they are, and their proud, anti-imperialist stance does not even speak to the current situation. At all.

Sir Keir has made clear his views on this ‘Stop the War’ approach – but the split in Labour deepens. The Left of the party is dissipating. Those who joined it because of Corbyn have drifted away; former MP Laura Pidcock’s resignation from the NEC, claiming it has become a “hostile territory for socialists”, was a sign of this. The part of the Left that still hangs on does so to await the resurrection of Corbyn.

This is fantasy politics on every level, yet the only person who can disrupt that fantasy is Corbyn himself.

He won't go. He's too much of a narcissist. 

Each man kills the thing he loves. For Corbyn, that thing is the Labour Party.