For the first time in a long time, I watched a Labour leader’s conference speech this afternoon and didn’t cringe with horror. To be fair, that’s because he kept name checking Liberal Democrat policies. He even said that the agreed with Paddy Ashdown over airstrikes on Syria.
Many people,including some in that Brighton hall, wanted him to fail terribly today. Indeed, the Blairites were desperate for that to happen. Labour spin doctor Lance Price was quick to condemn the speech as one of the worst he had ever heard. Was he listening to something else? For sure it wasn’t an example of oratorical excellence, with perfect construction, but Corbyn did what he had to do today. No horses were scared in the delivery of the speech. The entire nation wasn’t petrified by the thought of revolution coming to a street near them any time soon as the more excitable of our friends in the press have made out.
He clearly wasn’t used to having an autocue, but that added to the sincerity of what he was saying. We would be very foolish to underestimate Corbyn. As Gareth Epps reminded us, we tried underestimating the SNP and look where that got us in Scotland.
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