Comrade Corbyn, despite the pressures of leadership, remains the Anne of Green Gables of British politics, maintaining an almost childlike joy in everything he does. Pride of place in Jezza’s Westminster office is a Lorraine Kelly mug. Corbyn asked for the memento after appearing on the popular telly host’s ITV show – where the pair discussed his interest
in manhole covers.
There’s no record, as far as I can ascertain, of Kelly requesting a Corbyn mug. And yet the sustained abuse Corbyn receives from Labour critics, Conservative enemies and the Tory press isn’t generating hostility on the streets. People still clamour for selfies with the bearded lefty. My snout sat in awe in a Pret a Manger (Comrade Corbyn likes to pop out for his own sarnies, rather than dispatch a flunky) as the queue disintegrated, with punters hungry for snaps.
The Corbyn apparatchik and London City Hall escapee Neale Coleman said: “The one thing I learned from Boris Johnson was never say no to a selfie.” Corbyn must hope he absorbed more than that.
Perhaps the unlikeliest odd couple in parliament is Labour’s Warley Warrior John Spellar and the purple shirt Nigel Farage. Both went to the private Dulwich College in south London. Spellar, who spearheaded his party’s anti-Ukip campaign before the election, won a free scholarship and likes to remind Farage that the Kipper’s fees would now be £18,000 a year. “I passed the exam, too,” sniffs Farage, “but my father earned too much, so we had to pay.” One school, two backgrounds.
Trade unionists no longer regard attacks by the Tory press as just a badge of honour. Aslef’s president, Tosh McDonald, a train driver, wears a black T-shirt with the slogan “Hated by the Daily Mail” on it, after being denounced by Paul Dacre’s organ. I suspect Labour’s Keith Vaz is unlikely to revel in a message sprayed on the side of a van in Leicester. The fastidious chair of the home affairs committee is entitled to challenge at least one inaccuracy in the statement: “KEITH VAZZ IS A KNOB.”
“Any idiot in opposition who argues that government legislation can somehow be got through without programme motions should be taken out to the nearest lunatic asylum.” Who said that? Ken Livingstone? No, Kevan Jones. In June 2010. How times, and language, change.
To the launch of the new Left Book Club, where a director of the Corbynista reading circle, Anna Minton, waved a personalised glossy invitation to join the Institute of Directors. The Pall Mall bosses’ club’s direct mailing system is way off target.
I wonder: what could expelled Tory trickster Mark Clarke have on Grant Shapps?
Kevin Maguire is the associate editor (politics) of the Daily Mirror
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This article appears in the 25 Nov 2015 issue of the New Statesman, Terror vs the State