Jeremy Corbyn succeeded because he was sincere – and he failed for the same reason

How did the Labour leader and shadow chancellor get to the ‘walking past each other in the corridor and blanking each other’ level of not talking, asks John Rentoul

Wednesday 26 August 2020 20:26 BST
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Corbyn stuck to his beliefs... and it cost him
Corbyn stuck to his beliefs... and it cost him

Internal party feuds have different levels, like computer games. Apparently, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell got to the “walking past each other in the corridor and blanking each other” level of “not talking” last summer.

There are only two or three levels above that. There’s the “Gordon Brown turning to face the wall during meeting” level, and then there’s the Castlereagh and Canning level. They were both members of the same cabinet, who fought a duel in 1809 (Canning missed, while Castlereagh shot him in the thigh).

It was quite an achievement by the Labour Party that the apparent outbreak of non-speakers between the leader and shadow chancellor was kept quiet at the time. We knew that they took different lines in public, especially on the question of antisemitism, but it was just about possible to think that this was a deliberate attempt to convey different messages to different audiences.

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