No Theresa May. No Andrea Leadsom. Theresa was sticking to her plan of making herself invisible and waiting for her opponents to spontaneously self-combust. Andrea was back home in Northamptonshire reinforcing her stake in Britain’s future by cooking her children breakfast. So it was left to friends of Theresa and Andrea to champion their candidates in the Tory leadership race on the Marr and Peston shows.
Andrea struggled from the off. If just being herself wasn’t a big enough handicap to her own ambitions, having the support of the Tory MP, Tim “Not Even Nice But Still Dim” Loughton and Arron Banks – a man whose sole claim to political legitimacy is being so loaded he has been able to shovel huge amounts of cash towards Nigel Farage and Ukip over the years – on Marr should have sent Andrea into a cold sweat. Loughton just looked miserable as he went through the motions of defending Leadsom’s comments on motherhood, while Banks all but announced plans to merge Ukip with the right wing of the Tory party to create a Thousand Year Nasty Party.
Over on Peston, there was Iain Duncan Smith, a man whose credibility has now sunk so low that he was captioned as “Andrea Leadsom Fan” rather than “The Idiot who Introduced Universal Credit while Work and Pensions Secretary”. There was a lot of coughing and far too much sweat and sheen.
“I’m not saying Andrea – ahem – was stitched up by the Times as – ahem – unfortunately the interviewer had recorded the conversation,” he spluttered, “but she was – ahem – definitely stitched up. In any case, you – ahem – don’t need shedloads of experience – ahem – to be prime minister.” IDS seems to have forgotten that the Conservatives took rather a different view when they ousted him as their leader in 2003 after two traumatic years of feeble opposition. Ahem.
No such proxy warfare for the Labour party, as Jeremy Corbyn and Angela Eagle went head-to-head on the rival channels. Eagle has been promising to launch a leadership bid “in the next 24 hours” for the past 10 days, but on Peston she was keen to announce that she would definitely be putting herself forward for the Labour leadership the very next day. She didn’t look exactly overjoyed by the challenge; her anxiety as much a product of the bruising conflict ahead as her own relative inexperience on the Sunday politics chat shows.
Eagle’s main pitch was that she wasn’t Corbyn. She didn’t mention a single policy as for the time being she didn’t think the party had need of them. Policies were for when the party had a leader who was in a position to oppose. “Jeremy isn’t a bad man,” she said through gritted teeth. Her expression suggested there was a fine line between bad and stubborn which Jeremy was dangerously close to crossing. “He’s just not a leader. This isn’t about splitting the Labour party; it’s about uniting it.”
Not if Corbyn has a say in things. An angry, ranting Corbyn is a fairly harmless creature; a smiling, passive-aggressive Corbyn is a much scarier prospect. This was a Corbyn for post-post-truth politics. A Corbyn that would have been a match for George Smiley. “I think the Labour party is going places,” he said. “We’re doing very well.” That was well, as in failing to get out the Labour vote during the referendum “I worked flat out it’s just that I did it very quietly”; well, as in having a Labour leader who doesn’t have the confidence of more than 80% of his own MPs; well, as in a Labour party that has been unable to capitalise on the Tory Brexit meltdown. Marr missed a trick by not asking him what Labour doing badly would look like.
Marr did ask Corbyn about his own rather chequered track record of disloyalty to Labour leaders – it’s hard to find one he has ever supported – but he was adamant that that was then and this was now. Things feel a bit different when you’re not the instigator. Besides, Corbyn had only ever treached on matters of principle. Listen carefully and you could hear the sound of one hair splitting.
The more he was pressed, the icier he became. No, he wouldn’t stand aside. Yes, he would mount a legal challenge if Labour’s national executive committee said he couldn’t be on the ballot without the support of 51 MPs. He would not weaken his grip on power. It was almost as if he wanted a fight. He had the support of a few hundred thousand Labour members and the revolution started there. So what if Labour lost an election or three. Far better to have 100 of the right kind of MPs than 330 who could form a government.
It was all turning into a Bad D:Ream. Things can only get messier.
