One of Jeremy Corbyn’s more appealing characteristics is his willingness to stand up for the underdog. There are times, though, when he can take it just a little too far.
Even by its usual fairly dismal standards, this has been a terrible week for the government. Theresa May might have got lucky with her first bombing raid on Syria, but she has been held bang to rights over the shameful treatment of the Windrush generation. Amber Rudd has been forced to admit that she was concerned about the state of the Home Office – imagine how angry she is going to be when she finds out who is in charge – and the blame for the hostile environment policy clearly points to her predecessor as home secretary. One T May.
To compound the embarrassment, the whole episode has been unfolding while Britain has been hosting the Commonwealth heads of government meeting, making it only a matter of luck that no one has tried to deport a visiting head of state. So far.
It seemed a done deal, then, that Theresa would get a mandatory punishment beating at prime minister’s questions. She knew it, everyone knew it. But the Labour leader just couldn’t bring himself to deliver it. Faced with the prime minister’s own hopelessness, he chose to fight mediocrity with mediocrity. If a country gets the leaders it deserves, then the UK must be near enough on death row.
The prime minister had tried to minimise the damage by arranging for a Tory backbench stooge, Neil O’Brien, to open proceedings by asking for a Windrush update. This allowed Theresa to deliver her best “I’m sorry if I inadvertently gave any offence” all-purpose, general apology. “There has been a lot of confusion and anxiety,” she said. Most of it her own. Exactly a year after her decision to call the general election, Theresa was unable to prevent herself from channelling her inner Maybot. As an anniversary present to herself, presumably.
Corbyn began promisingly by asking about Albert Thompson, who had been refused cancer treatment. Why had she brushed this off when he had raised the case a few weeks ago? Theresa looked panicky and stumbled over her words. She hadn’t brushed off Thompson. She just hadn’t bothered to do anything about him because he hadn’t seemed very important then.
Things began to fall apart when the Labour leader asked her why she had chosen to destroy Windrush landing cards in 2010. It wasn’t me, Theresa declared happily. She had dun nuffink. It had been done the year before when Labour was in government, so Labour was obviously to blame. This wasn’t entirely true. The decision had been taken by the UK Border Agency without any ministerial involvement – but it was more than enough to floor Corbyn, who had made the basic error of asking a question to which he didn’t know the answer.
Even so, the Labour leader ought to have been able to recover. The real issue wasn’t the destruction of the landing cards per se. It was only the prime minister’s subsequent hostile environment policy that brought the landing cards into play. But Corbyn isn’t any good at thinking on his feet. Or when sitting down, for that matter. Thinking isn’t his strongest point. His mouth opened and closed, trying to form words that never came.
Theresa made the most of her reprieve, fumbling her way to safety. She couldn’t say how many people had been deported and she wasn’t in a hurry to find out, but she did want everyone to know that some of her best friends were Windrush generation. And in any case, even if she had been a little bit racist in her enthusiasm to cut immigration, she wasn’t as bad as the Labour leader, who refused to deal with antisemitism in his own party. It was as unedifying as that. Two leaders trading accusations of racism while refusing to accept any responsibility for their own actions.
While all this was going on, David Lammy was leaping up and down, desperate to ask the question his leader hadn’t. May eyed him nervously, well aware that he could inflict serious damage. The speaker, however, never called him and the danger passed. Despite never rising above poor and unconvincing, the prime minister had got away with it. Sometimes, being a Maybot is more than enough. The bar is that low.
