First there was Donald Trump, then Boris Johnson. And now, joining this noble lineage of politicians who insist that, despite all electoral evidence to the contrary, the voters are desperate for them to come back, we allegedly have Jeremy Corbyn, who, it was reported last week, is being “encouraged” by unnamed people to run for mayor of London. (Trump, Johnson, Corbyn – literally the worst game of Shag, Marry, Kill ever.)
What an absolutely marvellous idea. Just look at what happened to the Labour Party under Corbyn – investigated and criticised by the EHRC, got the lowest number and proportion of seats in 84 years in the 2019 election – and imagine what he could do to London! People often talk about how there needs to be a second or even alternative power base in England other than London, and I can see no surer way to achieve that than putting Corbyn in charge of the capital. I can picture it now: three years down the line, Corbyn is mayor of London, the streets are apocalyptic, Leicester Square a burnt-out shell, the shelves in supermarkets are empty, babes cry pitiably. Meanwhile, inside City Hall, Corbyn’s acolytes spend their days raging on Twitter about their Blairite / Zionist / Fascist mainstream media.
As it happens, this tantalising hint of Corbyn’s mayoral campaign was dropped the same week as the release of The Forde Inquiry, which is – by my calculations – the 17,516th investigation into the crappiness of Corbyn and the Labour Party under him. Honestly, Labour in the Corbyn era is assuming an almost mythic quality, like the assassination of JFK, and even those of us who are old enough to remember it can only look back in gasp in bewilderment, “How on EARTH did that happen?!”
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Jeremy Corbyn and Keir Starmer (Getty Images)
Anyway, to the Forde Inquiry, which was published during the heatwave, meaning all the usual Corbyn outriders coped with the 40 degree temperatures by taking to – yes – Twitter and insisting their man had been vindicated. At worst, they conceded, “both sides” (meaning Labour’s far left and the rest of the party) were responsible for the factionalism and dysfunction within Labour. I can only assume none of these people had actually read the report, because it’s hard to see how they could read conclusions like “there is enough evidence of direct intervention in antisemitism cases [by Corbyn], most notably in relation to cases which involved allies of Jeremy Corbyn” and “the operation was unstructured and at times chaotic , with a reluctance on the part of Jeremy Corbyn himself to make and communicate unequivocal decisions”, and then think: “Yes! Our man has finally been recognised as the political genius and secular saint that he is!”
But I guess it was this kind of “up is down and left is right” thinking within the Corbyn camp that made that whole era such a trip. After all, according to a Jewish Chronicle survey in 2018, more than 85 per cent of British Jews believed that Corbyn was antisemitic. This didn’t stop any of his followers or media cheerleaders from insisting that Corbyn was a champion of minorities. Well, he certainly motivated a lot of heretofore relatively quiet progressive British Jews to stand up and tell him and the rest of his momzers, shtunks and gonifs to get stuffed. So thanks for championing us in that direction, Jez.
I’ve called every election wrong since the 2016 referendum, so while I wouldn’t dare rule out a return of President Trump and Prime Minister Johnson, I feel pretty safe in saying there will never be a Mayor Corbyn. And if there is, I’ll be calling up a few estate agents in Manchester.
