John McDonnell, May Day rally 2019, Trafalgar Square
When I first saw this photograph, I thought it must be fake. But it isn’t, and I cannot understand why it wasn’t plastered all over the papers.
How could John McDonnell, whose economic policies I would like to see put in place, stand on a platform with a backdrop of two of the greatest mass murderers in history?
Nothing wrong with Marx, nor Engels: the thinkers, not the doers. Nor even with Lenin, blocked out – as in one of those jokey seaside photo booths – by McDonnell’s own commanding head.
But, Stalin? Mao?
What has become of the Labour Party? One of the things that has happened is a leader who seems less and less fit to lead. The days when Jeremy Corbyn seemed an innocent among the political wolves are long past.
What, after all, is innocent about extending the minimum wage to sixteen-year olds? A blatantly cynical move to garner the youth vote on which his success depends.
Like the fat boy in the classroom who is no longer made fun of and despised, this perennial backbencher seems to be revelling in his popularity. But what respect can anyone have for someone who has so little historical sense that when he saw the image below, he did not see what most people could see quite clearly, and later regretted that he ‘didn’t look more closely’?
Mear One’s mural ‘Freedom for Humanity’, deleted from an East London wall in 2012
Who wants a leader who talks off the top of his head? Neither this, nor his having been happy to ‘share a platform’ with Hamas and Hezbollah, while refusing to meet the equally odious Trump, make me think he is an anti-semite. But his courting universal favour by refusing to break bread with Trump does make me think he is an opportunist.
The initial rapture felt when, like so many lapsed Labour voters, I paid my three pounds and rejoined the party, didn’t last long. Here, I thought, was an honest man, perhaps a fool, but a holy fool. Now, unable to forget the sight of his second-in-command with Stalin and Mao looking over his shoulder, I see Corbyn as little more than the tool – albeit at times an unruly tool – of people a lot cleverer than he is.
Time to leave.