Thursday 17 September 2015

Why Corbyns question time was a roaring success

It is reported that at the end of yesterdays Prime Ministers question time, it is reported that David Cameron turned to George Osborne and said "That was easy". Given that Cameron has been doing this for ten years, he probably thought it was. What perhaps he didn't realise was that Jeremy Corbyn wasn't playing the same game.The vast majority of the general public are not interested in politics or politicians and don't know who Corbyn is. These are the people who make or break leaders. All they've heard about Corbyn from the right wing press, owned by billionaires, is that he's a left wing nut case. Corbyns first job is to persuade ordinary people that he is an ordinary bloke, who cares about improving the quality of their lives. In this respect, you can only judge his performance as a resounding success. Political commentators have berated him for not having acid follow up questions or witty digs. But this misses the point. What Cameron failed to do was answer the questions. That won't have gone unnoticed. For Corbyn, the challenge is to get people to believe he'll represent them and make their lives better. If you judge his display yesterday against this criteria, he did the job. It was hilarious to see right wing tweeters deconstructing his performance and saying that because he didn't sing the anthem everybody hates him. I suspect that if they continue to miss the point they are doomed.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Corbyn should use questions from the public again - but he must follow up with his own supplementary ones.

Sometimes he could then trick Cameron - if Dave makes fun of the supplementary question every time, Corbyn can reveal that it was actually from "Jim from Swansea", or whatever.