The Tories’ Corbyn attack video is absurd, paranoid and nasty – and will work
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Version 0 of 1. You might almost conclude that the Conservatives are terrified of Jeremy Corbyn. The strident scare movie released by the Tories today does not exactly suggest a governing party that thinks the new leader of the opposition is a joke, a reincarnation of Michael Foot, or an unelectable far-left throwback. Was this always the plan, to go so ludicrously ballistic years ahead of the next general election, or has the scale of Corbyn’s support in the Labour movement and the novelty of his no-frills personality and raw unplasticated ideas thrown Tory spinmeisters into a panic? It is the stuff of nightmares. Jeremy Corbyn, a threat to national security! The Labour party, a threat to national security! The rhetoric in the video is ramped up massively, the footage of Corbyn edited melodramatically and captioned too aggressively. It is easy to mock and makes the Conservative party look like it is on the back foot, unsure how to take on a new kind of Labour leader. We are back to Demon Eyes, the poster that absurdly tried to demonise Tony Blair back in 1997. Related: Tory theme of Corbyn's 'threat to national security' draws criticism That poster revealed the pure panic of the Conservative party as it tried to counter Blair’s wide appeal. Giving up on rational argument, it simply gave Blair red demonic eyes behind a torn off strip of his smiling face and warned “NEW LABOUR NEW DANGER”. It was one of the most useless pieces of electoral advertising of modern times, but it may soon be joined in the museum of crap propaganda by this Corbyn attack video. The film has the savagery of an American attack ad, or an average bulletin on Fox News, or some wild parody of insane rightwing propaganda dreamed up by Chris Morris or Charlie Brooker. It starts with a clip of President Barack Obama announcing the death of Osama bin Laden, then cuts to Corbyn describing the killing of the man who masterminded 9/11 as a “tragedy”. (It’s edited to exclude the fuller context of his remark). From there we switch to another Corbyn moment already served up in spades by his critics during the Labour leadership contest, this time where he calls Hamas and Hezbollah “friends”. And then it shows him saying supposedly shocking things about Trident and the army and peace and war in general – which we are expected to find just as troubling as the allegation that the new leader of the Labour party thought Osama bin Laden’s killing was morally equivalent to the barbarity of unprovoked mass murder in New York. The video is only slightly more effective than the scripted comments of Conservative ministers on television at the weekend, as they all trundled out the message that Labour under Jeremy Corbyn is a threat to national security. Clearly this is the line decided on from above, and it was wheeled out in an extremely clumsy, dead-eyed way by Tories who had apparently learned it by rote. The video at least provides some evidence to back up that claim – for it is really Corbyn speaking in it, however unjustly edited – but it feels rattled, bullying, charmless, ugly, and paranoid: the kind of Conservative attack that Corbyn supporters will relish, and that in the short term can only enhance his standing as a likable maverick. It seems the Conservatives have rejected the obvious course of playing a softly softly game against Corbyn and letting him make his own mistakes. A leader of the opposition who walks silently away from a TV reporter (but hey, it was Sky) as if he really did have something to hide is probably going to make his own unforced errors in time – that walk of silent anger was the first – but apparently the Conservative party cannot wait. It wants, it seems, to prosecute Corbyn as a traitor and the Labour party with him: to exclude Corbyn’s Labour not just from electability but national life. And all this is very reassuring for Corbyn’s new movement, until you imagine yourself as another kind of viewer – not a confirmed supporter of the Labour party or member of the chattering and twittering classes, but someone who does not pay much attention to politics and yet has certain rather conventional values like patriotism as well as a natural fear of terrorism, and a feeling that Britain is probably not one of the worst countries on Earth – a working class person, perhaps, or a middle class person who is not on “the left”. All this is very reassuring for Corbyn’s new movement, until you imagine yourself as another kind of viewer This video is absurd, but it differs from the Demon Eyes poster in one crucial sense. It is not completely made up. The clips of Corbyn have not been fabricated. Those recordings of him talking so provocatively – to put it kindly – about Osama bin Laden, Hezbollah and Hamas have been ruthlessly edited, sure, but he did really say those things. It is not very subtle of the Conservative machine to wheel this out so aggressively right now, when Corbyn is new and fresh and the centre of media attention, but these are not just smears – they are smears with legs. It was not subtle of the Tories to repeat ad nauseam that Ed Miliband would unite with the SNP to “wreck Britain” – but it worked. This attack video tells us two things. It tells us, as does the wider Tory nervousness, that Corbyn really does have it in him to be the left’s Nigel Farage. Over the coming months and maybe years he will give Labour a bounce, make it talked about, make it cool. Everyone on Twitter will be talking about his coming victory. He will not be unseated, he will build up his movement. And then Labour will be wiped out at the next general election. Because it does not matter how horrible and nasty and stupid this video and those that will follow it are. Unless Corbyn can prove he is a different man from the one who called terrorists “friends” and seemed sorry for Osama bin Laden on real, authentic video recordings, he will indeed by seen by the electorate as every bit as extreme as this attack ad claims. |