I heard him speak about 6 months ago and he came over well, but that was with a receptive audience. He treats his audience with respect and doesn't dumb down his message which means that with a proportion of the electorate he is bound to fail. Somebody like Boris who comes on with arms aloft and announces 'Big!' nods a couple of times and follows through with 'Shiny!' will succeed.
But Corbyn's real problem is the opposition ranked against him, and that's the vast majority of the press and other media and his own parliamentary party who were busy briefing against him before the ink was dry on his candidacy. The behaviour of both is just jaw-dropping. If there's a Tory crisis then expect the story to be 'Corbyn not up to exploiting Tory crisis' and the press can pick from twenty third way Labour MPs to provide soundbites. You will almost never see footage of one of his speeches. What you will see is Laura Kuenssberg with her claims about what he must be thinking, usually with a few of her barbed remarks presented as factual reporting. On Saturday morning The BBC gave Ann Coffey an 'interview' where she was able to present a character assassination of Corbyn without a challenge or critical question. the following morning, a scheduled appearance by the shadow chancellor John McDonnell was replaced with an interview with Hilary Benn, again largely unchallenged and uncritical. Sweet old Hilary gave his faint praise destruction of Corbyn with relish, every inch the conspirator - the kind of thing that would have had his father spinning in his grave.never trust a man in a blue trench coat, never drive a car when you're dead |
