Reality is starting to bite for Corbyn, as it always would

Well, Jeremy Corbyn, you had one job. To wit, to get through the first week as the new leader of the Labour Party without attracting the kind of press normally reserved for a reality TV star gone to the bad.

The acceptance speech last Saturday, containing as it did an attack on the media, was a sign of things to come. Having a go at the press so early on could be viewed as a smart way of getting his retaliation in first. But it would have been better to rise above such temptations, to reach out to the parts his odd charm had not reached. There is a theory that if every person in the country could sit down one to one with Mr Corbyn they would find him a perfectly reasonable, likeable chap. In the absence of such a mass exercise in democracy – and just think of the cost in biscuits alone – the media are a major conduit to the public. Even if Mr Corbyn regards himself very much as the lamppost in the dog-streetlight arrangement, it is wiser to engage positively than be snippy from the sidelines.

There followed a weekend of clown-car chaos during which Mr Corbyn attempted to form a shadow cabinet from a pool of MPs, the majority of whom had voted for anyone but him in the leadership contest. Given this, and the general tendency of the Labour Party to form a circular firing squad in times of strife, it was a minor miracle he succeeding in assembling a full set of shadow ministers at all. Against that, however, he managed to exclude women from the major offices, thus proving correct all those who look beyond his radicalism to see just another middle-aged, middle-class white male straight out of the flares and platforms era.

Shambling on to the TUC, his speech in the hall, positioning himself with the unions, went down well. What viewers at home will remember the occasion for, however, is the embarrassing longueur between his being introduced and finally appearing from the wings like some duffer in a local am dram production. Worse was to come when he gave the silent treatment to the UK national anthem during a service at St Paul’s for those who fought and died in the Battle of Britain. Finally, as he made it to Wednesday, there was his debut at Prime Minister’s Questions, where he displayed all the charisma of a man-hole cover (the photographing of which, we learned this week, is one of Mr Corbyn’s hobbies).

All in, he had one job, and he did not do it terribly well. That is one way of looking at it. One could argue that those, Tories to the fore, who believe all their dreams have come true in Mr Corbyn are missing the point spectacularly. His failure to convey a slick image could end up being the secret of his success. The village of Westminster, though a more diverse place today than in the past, is like one of those gated communities where money buys distance from hoi polloi. Within the walls of SW1 dwell cast-iron assumptions about how a politician must speak and act if they are to be successful. Always take the middle path. Never commit a “gaffe”. Have a nice suit, well-cut hair. Stepford politicians one and all. And where has it got them with the public? Politicians have never been more “professional”, and they have never been more despised. There is more than a chance the two are connected.

Those who are hoping to fell Mr Corbyn with ridicule about his appearance or manner do not understand the mood of the public. He can therefore write this last week of bad headlines off as so much froth and nonsense. His scratchy relationship with the press will only become a problem if he loses his rag, which he has come close to a couple of times. The public will overlook much, but not a sense of humour failure.

There are signs that those around Mr Corbyn are finally waking up to the fact that the glory days of public rallies at which crowds cheered his every word are gone. Reality is starting to bite, as it was always going to. Far greater headaches than a lively media lie ahead, and one wonders how equipped, if at all, Team Corbyn is to deal with them.

This much is inescapable. When it comes to such fundamental matters as Trident, Europe and, to a lesser extent, welfare reform, Mr Corbyn is toe to toe with his party in parliament when he should be shoulder to shoulder. As red lines go, these are as long as the Great Wall of China and as wide as the Atlantic. There is no splitting the difference here, you are either on one side or the other.

Granted, his shadow ministers can survive the first week by saying they have been given assurances from Mr Corbyn on X, Y, and Z, but that position can only hold for so long. Two spokesmen, one of them Shadow Scottish Secretary Ian Murray, have already said they will head for the exit if Mr Corbyn campaigns for Brexit. That is two by week one. A single doubter is a misfortune, two and more begin to look like heedlessness. As with the media, Mr Corbyn might wish at times that the Parliamentary Labour Party were not there, but they, too, are not going anywhere. He is stuck with them, and they with him, despite all the mutterings about another leadership election. If that happened, the anger among the grassroots would ensure he was returned with a positively North Korean majority, instead of the mere SNP one he received.

It is a bizarre situation, albeit one in keeping with the pinch-me politics of the times. Mention of the SNP brings us to another possibility for Mr Corbyn. Though there are hundreds of miles between here and Westminster, one has already begun to feel the love between the new SNP MPs and Mr C. Barring the not inconsiderable matter of where he stands on Scottish independence(agin' it), there is a lot they like about the new Labour leader and his old time socialist religion. If their own leader at Holyrood can be said to be the new queen of the left, might Mr Corbyn be the new queen mother, eccentricities and all? Making pals with the SNP rather than a tranche of his own backbenchers would also have the benefit of helping Labour in Scotland. Mr Corbyn has one job, but there is no end to the ways he could do it.