A mild-mannered veteran MP on the Labour left, one whose vote on the bombing of Syria remains uncertain, sent me an outraged text this morning, protesting at the “vile tone” of exchanges as the debate looms.
He singled out David Cameron’s “detestable” remark, made in private on Tuesday night to Conservative backbenchers, urging them not to vote “with Jeremy Corbyn and a bunch of terrorist sympathisers”. Quite right too, bad mannered and counter-productive, if not wholly untrue, only mostly so.
Unconvinced Tory rebels such as Basildon and Billericay’s John Baron, a former army officer serving in Northern Ireland, took pardonable offence.
What is it about Cameron, who can be so emollient and effective in his use of language, that he suddenly sees red mist and resorts to glib, bad-tempered abuse unworthy of his office? These are Dave’s “Flashman moments” and they do him or his Etonian education no good.
But my rarely quoted Labour friend’s targets also included his own leader. And why not? “Even those who will be voting with Corbyn are disgusted and angry,” he says. “He hasn’t shown the guts to stop the people involved in these waves of abuse. It’s totally unacceptable. If only party members are to be listened to, as he seems to be saying, why should anyone else vote Labour?”
It’s never easy to gauge exactly what is going on inside a party when the melodrama queens, hysterics and conspiracy theorists on both sides of any row naturally grab more than their fair share of media attention instead of their level-headed colleagues.
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