Jeremy Corbyn at the TUC: warmth mixed with disquiet
At Brighton for the TUC, the wind was up, the skies were dramatic and the hall was expectant. The chair called for a big TUC welcome for Labour’s new leader (or words to that effect).
They stood, clapped … clapped some more. An official pulled back the curtain to see where Jeremy Corbyn was. On the podium they said: “Where is he?” Still no sign. The clapping died down.
The platform bigwigs fiddled with their ties and badges. General secretaries kept rigid grins on their faces. Eventually Jeremy Corbyn slipped on to the stage to loud applause and whistles. All a far cry from the reception his fellow MPs gave him yesterday.
One union aide said excitedly that Jeremy Corbyn had a script but it’s soon clear that even if there is one, Jeremy Corbyn isn’t referring to it much. He attacked the government’s unnecessary austerity measures, their draconian trade union reforms, harsh welfare measures.
Jeremy Corbyn is a man who’d never planned for or wanted this job through his long career. Circumstances unforeseen have thrust it upon him. He shows no inclination to change his style – it is after all what helped to get him elected.
Outside the conference centre two young women rushed forward to have their pictures taken with him. A small group shouted “Jez We Can”. But inside one union general secretary told me off the record: “He’s got to stop doing the Tolpuddle Allotments Society speech.”
A TUC delegate said: “Ah, we can play Corbynista bingo”, as the speech quickly launched into a defence of Colombian trade unions and ILO conventions. “It makes me long for Ed Miliband’s imaginary friends,” one union official said.
The response in the hall was warm. Dave Prentis of Unison said the delegates showed their love for Jeremy Corbyn. But there is some real disquiet in senior union circles with phase one of Project Corbyn. Len McCluskey was amongst those telling Jeremy Corbyn not to take his old political chum John McDonnell into the top team with him.
Others mutter about a lack of professionalism, a ropey operation, and you also hear complaints that they think the Labour party machine is showing its hostility in not throwing a warm embrace around Mr Corbyn
Back at Westminster, one Labour former cabinet minister said to me: “On Sunday night I worried this (the Corbyn leadership) could fail too quickly.” His rationale was that Jeremy Corbyn has to fail on his own terms, in a way that is pinnable on him and which gives time for the centre/centre-right to come up with what they signally failed to provide in the leadership contest: a connecting political style and content. Three prominent Labour MPs passed on similar thoughts to me spontaneously.
They were talking the morning after the PLP meeting at which Jeremy Corbyn was greeted with silence and with pokey questions. At the end of the meeting the PLP Chairman John Cryer thought long about how to characterise it before telling questioners it had been “comradely,” which all good lefties know is a euphemism deployed when things are anything but.
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