Corbyn v Bozo - Starmer Was Right

After a party leaders’ special edition of BBC Question Time yesterday evening, the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog concluded “that’s proceedings over. A bit of a snoozefest”. But after seeing this morning’s faux outrage from the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press, that opinion was hastily recalibrated.

The Beeb’s “Key takeaways from BBC Question Time election special” tells why: “why did Sir Keir [Starmer] back [Jeremy] Corbyn in the 2019 general election … Fiona Bruce [asked] whether he had meant it when, in 2019 he said Jeremy Corbyn would be a ‘great prime minister’ … He finally added he thought Mr Corbyn would have been a better PM than Boris Johnson”.

But for the right-wing press, and indeed the Fawkes massive, Bozo was their hero, his defenestration a shameful casting off of someone who had won such a conclusive election victory in 2019, albeit aided and abetted by some downright poisonous attacks on the then Labour leadership, and arguably by some within the Labour Party trying to throw the contest.

So this morning, Staines and his gofers have offered any of their readers not yet asleep this revision of history: “Keir Starmer said last night that Jeremy Corbyn would have been a better Prime Minister than Boris Johnson … An outlandish remark considering Corbyn would have sent the country into ruins”. Bad English, bad argument, bad upcoming losers.

But good for their relationship with the press, where the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph has told readers “Starmer: Corbyn better than Johnson as PM … Labour leader pinned down during debate over support for MP forced out of party”, while the Mail has gone Full Dacre on it.

“CORBYN WOULD HAVE BEEN BETTER PM THAN BORIS, KEIR CLAIMS … Starmer’s extraordinary answer in TV grilling by voters … The Labour leader was left squirming on live TV as he was grilled over his support for his predecessor, who he twice tried to make PM”. So is the Mail right to go into maximum pearl-clutching mode? We can more usefully consider the Jezza v Bozo question by looking at the one issue to hit the UK early in 2020.

And that issue was the Covid-19 pandemic. Bozo hesitated, acted later than he should have, and somehow became enamoured of the idea that “Herd Immunity” could save the day. Remarks such as “let the bodies pile high” did not help his cause. But Bozo’s worst Covid minus point was the revelation that Downing Street had become Party Central during the pandemic.

While the little people had significant restrictions placed upon their freedom of movement, in Number 10 there were parties where staffers and other hangers-on indulged themselves freely upon whatever bottles were to hand, with the result that many became not only Elephant’s Trunk And Mozart, but physically sick to boot, hurling their hoops on the wall to wall.

Jeremy Corbyn’s abstemious inclinations would not have countenanced such behaviour. And, as John McDonnell would have been Chancellor of the Exchequer, there would have been no chance of Covid-spreading wheezes like Rishi Sunak’s Eat Out To Help Out scheme. Jezza would have done Covid better. But the right-wing press would have moaned all the way.

And on concluding the Brexit negotiations, nothing could have been worse for the country than the frankly inept approach of Bozo and his supposed expert negotiator “Lord” Frost. Nor would there have been the infamous “VIP Lane” via which so many hundreds of millions were spaffed up the wall, to use Bozo’s happy phrase, with precious little to show for it.

So why is Corbyn not still in the Labour mainstream? Ah well. That has more to do with a new authoritarian and control-freak mentality emerging from the Labour NEC than Starmer personally. But he must tackle it sooner rather than later. The control-freak episodes were not Tony Blair’s finest hour. And they will not end well for Labour. Even though Starmer was right last night.

Corbyn would have been a better PM. Although we’re not allowed to admit it.

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