Dan Hodges’ Corbyn Paranoia

It has finally happened: the crossing of the floor by the Telegraph’s not at all celebrated blues artiste Whinging Dan Hodges, the Colonel Nicholson of the Labour Party, happened long ago, but now has come the realisation that, just because he isn’t paranoid, it doesn’t mean that someone, somewhere is not coming to get him. It would be laughable if it were not so …. oh stuff it, it really is laughable.

He's desperate, Dan

Beneath the headline “Who will dare to confront Corbyn’s Children? Labour’s conference has seen a sinister tyranny emerging among the new leader’s supporters”, Hodges looks at the genial and mild-mannered Jeremy Corbyn, and his consensual, democratic approach to politics, and sees a cult figure, supported by hordes of mesmerised, zealous followers, willing to eliminate all opposition to their leader.

You think I jest? This is Dan’s opening gambit: “In 1978 the horror writer Stephen King produced one of his most famous, and chilling, works. ‘Children of the Corn’ tells the tale of a middle-aged, suburban American couple who stumble across a remote village in rural Nebraska populated entirely by children. Scary children … All the adults – the local minister, the police chief – have been killed”. And there’s more.

“Sacrificed by the malevolent infants as an offering to their evil deity ‘He Who Walks Behind The Rows’. Here at Labour conference in Brighton someone, or something, is walking behind the rows. You can see it in the eyes of every Labour MP. The dread. ‘One misplaced phrase. One careless act of disloyalty. Then they will come for me’ … And they will. The 150,000 will come”. Hiding behind the sofa? No, neither am I.

And all those new members, Dan reckons, are A Very Bad Thing: “The Labour party membership surge is a catastrophe matched only by the election of Corbyn himself … It has already ushered in The Terror” [yes, he really wrote that]. But do go on. “Yesterday it was reported trade union activists are drawing up a hit list of former shadow cabinet members who have refused to serve the new regime”.

Yes, it was “reported” by the Telegraph making it up. In any case, what’s the problem with democracy? Ah, but Dan has that figured out, too: “this is not democracy. It’s the tyranny of the majority. Or the tyranny of the minority masquerading as the majority”. And a bit more Stephen King, perhaps? “As far as the average representative of the parliamentary Labour party is concerned, there is nothing out beyond the corn”.

And on he wibbles: “The mere fear of de-selection is enough. Fear. It is the great unifier now. Fear of the unbelievers. Fear of being branded an unbeliever. Fear, above all else, of the unbelievers who live out beyond the corn”. Almost unnoticed along the way, though, he admits “Maybe nothing will come of it”. Nothing other than Hodges’ credibility quietly being flushed down the pan for the last time, just to gain the favour of his bosses at the Tel.

Is this supposed to be journalism? One thing’s for sure, it’s got sod all to do with reality.