viewpoint


Control freaks and Corbyn’s catastrophe


Trying to set the news agenda cost Labour dear, says Francis Beckett L


abour has gone down to stunning defeats before, but never one like that in December 2019. There had always


been formidable opponents before. This time, Labour faced a prime minister despised for his untruthfulness, laziness and contempt for democracy, and detested by the most senior members of his own party. How could Labour lose? In my part of north London, they think Jeremy Corbyn is an anti-Semite (he isn’t). In other places, they think he’s a dangerous revolutionary (he isn’t that either). Voters were more frightened of him than of Johnson. Remainers were more horrified by Corbyn than by Brexit. His failure to communicate was epic. Facing a fiercely hostile media,


Corbyn refused to engage with those who could have been won over – journalists, those who feared him and those who were not certain – and with the two big issues of Brexit and anti-Semitism. Corbyn’s PR people, led by


communications chief Seumas Milne (a former op ed editor and labour editor at the Guardian who Corbyn privately called ‘the great Milne’), imagined they could write the news agenda. They did not wish to talk about Brexit and anti-Semitism, so Corbyn sounded cross and grudging every time he was forced to do so. Corbyn knew he was the problem.


Several months ago, he desperately wanted to resign, but his advisers talked him out of it. There’s a story that they refused to let his sons into his room until he agreed not to resign. Milne is a theoretician in the Marxist sense, and thinks politicians can write


the political agenda. Practical politicians know, as Harold Macmillan put, that what decides the agenda is ‘events, dear boy, events’. In June 2018, Corbyn and his staff met the Board of Deputies of British Jews. It could have started a dialogue. But Corbyn said almost nothing at the meeting. Milne did the talking, and became animated on the subject of Israel, accusing it of ethnic cleansing. The Board of Deputies went away with the sense that Corbyn was not interested in the issue. That grew as Corbyn seemed to give ground inch by inch, reluctantly and with bad grace. I was one of several writers who failed to get any sense out of Corbyn’s office on this issue. Former Tribune editor Mark Seddon and I were commissioned to write a book about the new Labour leader. My repeated phone calls and emails on anti-Semitism produced only a cross phone call from Seumas to Seddon, berating us for including the issue in the book at all. Mark and I wanted to paint a


sympathetic though not uncritical picture of Corbyn, but we didn’t even get the normal help any journalist expects of any press office. They seldom returned our calls or answered our emails. Other sympathetic writers tell a similar story. I think we were considered not quite reliable. Corbyn was allowed to engage only with true believers. In June 2018, Corbyn was in Brighton to address the Fire Brigades Union annual conference. The FBU arranged that he would also record an interview with one of their officials. The questions were agreed with


Corbyn’s office in advance, and the union told journalists covering the conference they could listen in. But


one of his minders – a senior adviser – bustled into the room and rudely evicted the journalists, saying this was a ‘private interview’. I was there, and managed to get


Corbyn alone for a moment. He was surprised that he had been told nothing about an interview request from two left-wing writers he knew fairly well. “Of course I’ll talk to you and Mark,” he said. Unfortunately, the minder caught


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him at it, and brusquely hustled him away to stand somewhere else for the cameras (although no cameras were present), while another of his entourage told me grimly: “Jeremy often says he’ll do something. That doesn’t mean it will happen.” It didn’t. Having given Johnson an election at the most favourable time for Johnson, Corbyn’s strategists ran an election campaign with no focus, no clear message and no flexibility, and kept all the party’s most effective broadcasters away from broadcasting to make room for Corbyn loyalists. Their legacy is five years when


The press office seldom replied. Other sympathetic writers tell a similar story. Corbyn was allowed to engage only with true believers


Johnson can do whatever he likes, and a Brexit that a clear majority of the voters do not want. More people voted for remain parties than leave parties, yet Labour managed to turn this into a victory for Johnson’s peculiarly uncaring version of Brexit. Perhaps they wanted victory within the Labour Party, not victory for the Labour Party. Whatever the truth, Corbyn’s advisers have – like Milne’s hero Arthur Scargill – done dreadful harm to the cause they serve. • Jeremy Corbyn and the Strange Rebirth of Labour England by Francis Beckett and Mark Seddon is published by Routledge


theJournalist | 09


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