No one could ever say that Jeremy Corbyn would die wondering. The same couldn’t be said of many of his shadow cabinet colleagues who followed him on to the platform in the atrium of Bradford University student union for the launch of the Labour manifesto. Some attempted a fixed grin and tried to remember to applaud in the right places; others could barely manage that. The shadow defence secretary, Nia Griffith, didn’t even make it to the starting line. For them this was an ordeal to be endured rather than enjoyed.
“Let me introduce you to Britain’s next prime minister,” said Sarah Champion, Labour shadow minister for women and equalities, keeping her fingers firmly crossed. Better to travel in hope and all that. The audience had no such doubts. These were the faithful and they roared their adoration. A chant of “Corbyn, Corbyn” filled the hall and Corbyn let it linger for several minutes before raising his arms for silence. He had waited a lifetime for this.
Opinion was shifting towards Labour, he insisted. Imperceptibly to the naked eye maybe, but shifting nevertheless. “Our manifesto will be radical and responsible,” he said, “and I would like to personally thank everyone who has contributed to it.” There were too many to name by name as it had been through so many drafts and he was still none the wiser about who had managed to leak several versions to the press the week before.
No matter. He was determined to proceed as if everything was coming as a total surprise to the audience. He had managed to find a way of raising £48.6bn in tax revenues and he was going to spend the exact same amount on improving public services and raising people’s standards of living. Perfect symmetry. No one could call his plans uncosted because John McDonnell and Diane Abbott had gone through the figures with a calculator several times.
The Labour government would get the extra £48.6bn by asking the wealthiest individuals and businesses to pay a little bit more. Quite a bit more, come to think of it. But never mind, they could afford it. Especially that Philip Green. Anyone earning less than £80,000 wouldn’t have to contribute a penny more.
Corbyn knew many people might think they would one day be earning £80,000 a year and could be a bit put off at the thought of paying a higher rate of income tax. But now was the time to get real. That really wasn’t going to happen, was it? Even if Labour raised the “national living wage” to £10 an hour by 2020, most people were still going to be fairly broke. Only Labour could guarantee that people would be marginally less broke than under the Tories.
Corbyn was fairly hazy on some of the details of his nationalisation proposals, though he had been reassured they wouldn’t cost anything and he didn’t appear entirely sure if he would lift the freeze on welfare payments, but his plans to abolish tuition fees, build 1m homes and create four extra bank holidays got loud whoops.
Brexit got the briefest of mentions. Labour was committed to scrapping the Tories’ Brexit white paper even though it had gone to great lengths to support it in the last parliament. Though it was possible that its own new Brexit bill might still end up looking much the same as the Tories’. But this was all fine detail. A need-to-know basis.
Much of the speech was delivered in a minor key, almost as if Corbyn was going through the motions and had long since reconciled himself to the inevitable. Come the questions at the end, the faithful tried to pick him up. A question about immigration numbers was loudly booed. A man from the Morning Star blamed the strongly biased media for Labour’s poor showing in the polls and was rewarded with an ovation. Even a reporter from the Daily Mirror copped it for asking if it was possible that Labour’s problem was Corbyn and not his policies.
Corbyn tried to pick himself up. “This is not a personality cult,” he said as dozens of his supporters shouted out his name. He had been elected as Labour leader by a very large number of people and he had felt their love. All it would take was a little time. Time was something very few of the shadow cabinet seemed to have. The moment the event concluded, most beetled off before anyone had a chance to quiz them. For some of them this would be the first and last time the manifesto got a hearing in the entire campaign.
