Corbyn's defiant coronavirus rant reminds us why Britain has had a lucky escape

Jeremy Corbyn
Credit: Aaron Chown

Just when you think there’s nothing left to say about Jeremy Corbyn, the socialist gift that keeps on giving, leaves another present under the tree. This time the outgoing Labour leader has given an interview to the BBC in which he insists he was “absolutely right” to make promises of eye-watering levels of public spending during the December general election.

Well, now.

This particular intervention is timely and significant because it clarifies exactly why Corbyn’s leadership represented four and a half wasted years for his party, and gives us all a handy reminder, at this time of fear and unhappiness, that the decision we took last polling day was absolutely the correct one.

His actual argument is so lightweight and superficial – the hard Left like their arguments to be able to fit easily onto Socialist Workers’ Party placards during demonstrations – that it barely requires addressing. But let’s do so anyway. “I was denounced as somebody that wanted to spend more money than we could possibly afford,” he told Laura Kuenssberg. This much is certainly true. He was also, it has to be said, denounced, accurately, as a number of other things, including being over-friendly to terrorists, anti-Semites and hostile nations. But let’s focus on the money stuff for now.

He went on: “I didn’t think that it would take only three months for me to be proved absolutely right by the amount of money that government is now prepared to put in – and parliament has just voted through – to deal with the coronavirus crisis.”

The thing is, Jez, the majority of citizens recognise something that you don’t: namely that the coronavirus epidemic is an unusual and unprecedented event that requires an unusual and unprecedented response. What Labour proposed at the last election was an irresponsible level of spending (on dubious projects) every year. Forever. 

I pointed out only this week that the emergency spending that chancellor Rishi Sunak has announced will have unpleasant consequences in the medium term as we seek ways of getting the deficit and borrowing levels back under control. Imagine the long-term economic consequences for the UK if the extra spending announcements we’ve just seen were a permanent part of the economic outlook.

What’s more, Sunak and parliament have approved these extraordinary measures, not as a way of establishing a permanent and all-embracing super-state wielding power over all our lives, but as a way of preserving our capitalist system so that it can function on the other side of this crisis. These measures are being welcomed by the public, not because we want them to become permanent, but because we are confident they will be temporary.

And if Corbyn really has won this argument, if he truly has been vindicated in his belief that stratospheric spending is justified, can he explain why Boris Johnson’s Conservatives have maintained a near 20-point lead in the latest opinion polls? It’s no good dismissing such surveys as a consequence of our being in a state of emergency (in which electorates generally tend to support the government of the day) while at the same time refusing to acknowledge that that same emergency is the only reason such levels of public spending can be justified.

All the same, as we approach the end of the Corbyn era, he has done us a service by reminding us why he was always unfit for any government office. Someone who established their political views in his teenage years and who has never subsequently felt the need to revisit them is wholly unsuited to a role of leadership of a party, let alone a government and a country.

Margaret Thatcher was often criticised for being inflexibly ideological, probably by Corbyn himself and certainly by the Labour Party. But Thatcher had the small advantage of having led her party to three consecutive general election victories and had, therefore, some justification for believing she had been vindicated in her beliefs.

Corbyn, on the other hand, has led his party to two general election defeats and no outright victories even in local government contests. He has frequently been described as “humble”, yet where is the humility in insisting, against all the evidence and the judgment of the people, that you are right, have always been right and will always be right?

And since Corbyn is at last on the way out and Keir Starmer is about to replace him, this interview, with all its arrogance and obstinacy, should provide a lesson for the new leader. The public really don’t like politicians who are unable to admit that they or their parties ever got anything wrong. Most opposition leaders prefer to define themselves against the government. Starmer needs urgently to define himself against his predecessor, to acknowledge his party’s mistakes and to promise to try harder.

Which is why Starmer’s adherence, for PR purposes, to most of his party’s 2019 manifesto will be a ridiculous position to maintain once the ballots in the leadership contest have been safely counted. The last thing he should do is to start as Corbyn has finished, insisting that he is right and everyone else is wrong.