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@jj72
From 2015, by David Stubbs.
HAVING seen the left wing Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's speech, I have to say I was entirely unimpressed. To begin with, he wasn’t even wearing any shoes. This was either through absentmindedness or as some misguided socialist statement of intent. Or perhaps he has gone quite mad and fancies himself to be Jesus Christ himself. Whatever, it shows that the left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn has chosen to surround himself with incompetent advisors - or perhaps disciples? In fairness, it turns out that he was wearing shoes. However, given that it was impossible to tell from the way the cameras were set up, concealing him from below the knee as he stood at the podium, this hardly bodes well for the sort of open and honest leadership we were promised. Are you wearing shoes or are you not, the left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn? Just answer a straight question.
The left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn has a beard, and doubtless this is why the vast majority of Party members voted for him. However, beneath the beard lies the face of a clean-shaven man - like Ed Miliband, like Gordon Brown before him. We would do well to remember this.
The speech itself was hard to follow as he rambled across a whole range of topics - housing, Syria, inequality - which made it hard to follow. He could take a leaf from Tony Blair’s book. At a memorable conference in 1996, he repeated the word “Education” over and over for 45 minutes. This was political oratory at its finest. We who were there came away with a very clear sense of what the speech was all about. It was about education. We were able to write about it the next day in our broadsheet columns and write that, make no mistake, the speech had been all about education. There was no similar clear, binding theme to the left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn’s speech. It was all over the place.
Finally, he failed to address a wider audience than those in the conference hall. Yes, inside the conference hall he was audible but go and stand outside in the street and all you could hear was the sound of traffic and the sea lapping against the pebble beach. The left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn must find a way of solving this if he is to be trusted, and not just another clean-shaven politician whose gimmick is that he wears no shoes. It is all very well having principles and appealing to a “hard core” of voters but what about those who would never vote for him in a million years? Unconvinced Tories such as David Cameron? Instead of trying to placate Mr Cameron, trying to bring him onside, he spent half the speech insulting the man. I tell you this; unless the left wing Labour leader Mr Corbyn can find a way of persuading David Cameron to vote for him at the next election, then he must be considered the miserable failure many of us predicted he would be.