Sir, – In the early 1980s the British Labour Party marginalised Tony Benn, the one senior figure in its ranks with the wit, courage and charisma to take on and defeat Margaret Thatcher.
The party’s history in the intervening decades has been a long, slow playing out of the consequences of this disastrous act of prospective regicide.
Jeremy Corbyn, though he may have his late mentor’s courage in spades, is singularly lacking in the wit and charisma departments. This fact, coupled with his truly vitriolic treatment at the hands of the right-wing media, makes it all too certain that he will fail – and fail badly – to evict the egregious Theresa May from Downing St on June 8th.
This is a tragedy. As Labour’s just-launched manifesto suggests, Mr Corbyn would in fact be the most transformational prime minister since Clement Attlee, another Labour leader written off in his day as too nondescript to be taken seriously. With John McDonnell at his side as chancellor of the exchequer, Mr Corbyn as prime minister would offer his country nothing short of a democratic socialist course correction that would place compassion for the vulnerable at the heart of government policy.
As things stand, June 8th promises to usher in a renewed Conservative mandate to victimise students, the low-paid, the homeless, those languishing in insecure rental accommodation, those on disability benefits, those reliant on food banks – not to mention all those innocents in far-off lands who would rather not be torn limb from limb by British bombs. – Yours, etc,
Dr DARAGH DOWNES,
Dublin 2.