One of the big challenges of criticising Jeremy Corbyn is that if you have any skin whatsoever in what is now deemed to be the “old politics” you’re views are instantly dismissed as irrelevant. So it is that I’ve spent the day looking at Twitter, with old politicos saying the speech was rubbish and the Corbynistas declaring it to be an outstanding and inspirational call to arms. And to an extent, I am open to the charge that I am just not getting it. I’m astounded at his rise to power, despite feeling and understanding the reasons behind it. There are examples across Europe of a populist leftwing party surging to victory in the way that the Corbynistas envision. They may be right.
There is however a real question of how far down the rabbit hole you’re willing to go. For example, we aren’t seeing much of a Corbyn bounce in the opinion polls. Do you dismiss all that as methodological flaws and biases in an industry that got the election result very wrong (apart from the exit poll)? And then, today: are criticisms that Corbyn’s speech was dull and directionless failing to appreciate that the public are hungering for more “straight talking” and less spin and thus will lap it up?
With that caveat, let me get this out of the way: Corbyn’s speech was dull as ditchwater. It was like a rambling recitation of a telephone directory. An 80s telephone directory, back in the day when you could fell a rampaging bull elephant with just volume one of your local Yellow Pages with a single blow. Indeed, from the cutaway shots of the audience in the television coverage, after the halfway mark it looked as if many members of the Labour conference had received precisely such a glancing blow.
It’s not that the policy content was bad; I agreed with most of what I can recall. It’s just that there was so much of it. There was no theme, no irreducible core.
At some point halfway through he apparently had a pop at the media, but I must have zoned out (I remember his japes at the beginning at its expense). This is ironic because the vast majority of people who will see this speech will do so because the news programmes, channels and websites will have shown them excerpts of the better parts of the speech, thus shielding them from the sheer tedium of it in bulk. So much of the praise he’ll earn this evening will be because of the eeevil media doing his spin for him.
It might well be “old politics” to say that he desperately needs a competent speechwriter, but I haven’t chugged down enough Kool-Aid yet to believe that it wouldn’t help. You don’t need to be the greatest orator to do a competent job with a little practice and good content. By all means, let Corbyn be Corbyn. But don’t let Corbyn get in the way of what Corbyn has to say. Is that really too much to expect?
What I saw today was a man who has started to believe his own hype and that somehow all the “new” politics needs to be is the opposite of “old” politics. Again, maybe I’m deluded and stuck in the old ways, but if you really think that can you explain to me what that speech today actually achieved?
Totally agree – who is writing the stuff for him??! Did they not think this was something worth while planning a bit in advance?
The real kicker is that there was content that could have been bundled up to make a really powerful speech. There was great potential in the stuff about threats to people’s economic security – a theme that could have been really developed across several areas. But he raised it and then moved onto the next item on a long shopping list. Such a waste.