Opinion

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn not best placed to make a nation feel secure in the face of threat

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly

Tom Kelly is an Irish News columnist with a background in politics and public relations. He is also a former member of the Policing Board.

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appearing on The Andrew Marr Show 
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appearing on The Andrew Marr Show  Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn appearing on The Andrew Marr Show 

NO doubt John McDonnell thought he was being funny when he threw a copy of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book across the despatch box at George Osborne.

It’s the kind of humour one could imagine that political clowns like McDonnell share. Unfortunately McDonnell’s sense of humour is about as belly achingly funny as Bernard Manning on a night out with the Equality Commission.

McDonnell has been at pains to demonstrate that he is a competent would-be chancellor but he fails miserably at every hurdle.

The Corbyn and McDonnell double act would probably go down well in Albania. They like Norman Wisdom over there.

The problem with British democracy is that it does not work without an effective Opposition and the legacy of Ed Miliband is that he has left the Labour party as about as effective as a neutered Tom cat.

Miliband must bear the brunt of Labour’s woes along with the madcap Trade Union leaders who elected him. In a way Corbyn and McDonnell are at least being true to themselves.

One doubts that they ever imagined that they would be the leaders of Her Majesty’s Opposition. Unfortunately for the Labour party - they are.

Corbyn is intent on paralysing his party by analysis and consultation. The Labour Party he insists must listen to its membership; which would be fine if that membership was not so compromised by so many components that compete against the interests of the Party.

In one fell swoop the membership of the Labour party has handed over the keys of its asylum to the inmates. No one in their right mind is ever going to elect into government a party whose front bench is so fragmented. The Tory party strategists could never have imagined such a self-defeating move by the Labour party as electing Corbyn as its leader.

The two key policy areas that are currently the litmus test for political competency in Britain today are stewardship of the economy and the security of the nation. The outcome of the general election answered the question as to which of the parties was more trusted on the economy.

The dithering Miliband anchored as he was to the demands of the Trade Union movement saw to that. As did the complete meltdown of the Labour organisation in Scotland which not only clung onto a misplaced sense of political entitlement but that also wholly underestimated the mood of the electorate and the insatiable carnivorous appetite of the SNP.

That only leaves the issue of national security. In today’s world it’s impossible to wholly protect a country from the kind of attacks carried out by Al Qaida or ISIL and the carnage in Paris and the lockdown in Brussels proves that.

However, the population are fearful and in a recent trip to London, it’s clear that many there believe that it’s only a matter of time before the city is hit with another series of 7/7 terrorist incidents.

Corbyn as a committed pacifist, like another forlorn (and forgettable) Labour leader George Lansbury, is not the best placed man to give confidence to a nation faced with an external threat. Ernest Bevin, former General Secretary and of the Transport and General Workers Union and great Labour Foreign Secretary once said of Lansbury, something that could be said of Corbyn, that he was fond “ of hawking your conscience round from body to body asking to be told what to do with it.”

Lansbury having met Hitler was impressed into thinking here was a man who liked “old people and children” and who believed “Christianity in its purest sense might of have had a chance with him (Hitler).”

Corbyn’s initial refusal to give the UK police his backing to “shoot to kill” if confronted with armed terrorists caused an immediate public storm and then another Corbyn press office clarification, which amounted to a climb down.

Even Len McCluskey, the leader of Unite, which propelled Corbyn into the leadership of the Labour party disowned him and said that he must learn as leader of the Labour party not to say the first thing that comes into his head.

But Corbyn is incapable of doing something that is counter-intuitive to a lifetime on the fringes of politics. Like Lansbury before him- Corbyn has a habit of putting personal beliefs before policy.

Labour’s dilemma is the Conservative’s opportunity and Cameron is the greatest opportunist of them all. To Corbyn’s Lansbury, Cameron looks like Churchill. On the plus side Lansbury’s tenure as Labour leader was short.