Jeremy Corbyn wants more nice things, fewer nasty ones

Jeremy Corbyn is a good man. You can tell because he has a beard and sandals and he writes poetry. His writings brim with goodness. In his manifesto he preaches “compassion”, “peace”, “equality”, “democracy” and other nice abstract nouns. But he has a stern side: he does not like “injustice”, “cruel” things or “greed”. He is stalwart: such feelings have made him again run for election to be the MP for “the people of Islington North”, though presumably not for the greedy ones.

Mr Corbyn used to stand not just for abstract nouns but also—though his manifesto falls a little quiet on this point—for the Labour Party, which he led between 2015 and 2020. In that time he presided over not only Labour’s worst election defeat by number of seats since 1935 but also an alleged rise in antisemitism, which critics felt smacked less of “equality” and “compassion” than of rather nastier things. Under his successor, Sir Keir Starmer, Labour first banned him from being a candidate and later booted him out of the party. In this election, Mr Corbyn is offering himself as an independent. He is also offering “hope”, for hope is “very precious”. Which is a little piece of poetry in itself.

George Orwell wrote that at one point all socialist thought was Utopian. You can see the sunlit uplands gleaming in Mr Corbyn’s prose. But for most Britons the far-leftie who might have been prime minister feels dystopian, a token of quite how unhinged British politics became in recent years. Other reminders lurk. Liz Truss is still standing for election; Boris Johnson still writes a weekly newspaper column. There is nothing in the rules to stop them, save perhaps a sense of embarrassment. As Pericles wrote, unwritten rules bring “undeniable shame to the transgressors”.

But then Pericles hadn’t encountered Mr Corbyn. And so, on a brisk June day, a small gaggle of supporters has gathered in north London to canvas for him. There are elderly men with grey beards and fleeces, and elderly women with low heels and high principles. When Mr Corbyn arrives, they clap. Jeremy, one says, has a “good heart”.

As he rarely hesitates to make clear. A recent poetry anthology he edited is dedicated “to all those suffering from miscarriages of justice” (you might have thought they’d suffered enough). In it, he promises that there is “a poet in all of us”. The anthology offers verses on war, imperialism and racism, before brightening up for a poem titled “Death of a Financier”. It ends with a poem by Mr Corbyn himself about refugees in Calais (“The setting sun gleams on the Hotel de Ville…”).

His goodness is also evident in the things for which he campaigns, such as “our NHS”, “our schools” and “our ticket offices”. A politician of the possessive pronoun, he speaks of “our” this and “our” that a lot. (“The rich” are not embraced in this way; they possess enough already.) He is campaigning for democracy, which brings “inclusivity” and “co-operation”. Though when The Economist arrives, his reaction—“Could you stand back, please?” and “Can you leave it then?”—doesn’t feel that inclusive. The whole of the press, says a canvasser, is against Mr Corbyn. Which is unfathomable. As he is a good man. ■

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