UK Politics: For Brutus is an honourable man….

Assassination of Julius Caesar

With exquisite irony, thus spoke Mark Antony in Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as he whipped up the rabble into a frenzy against the dictator’s assassins.

The phrase keeps coming to me as I watch members of his own party praise Jeremy Corbyn for his sincerity and integrity in his stand against air strikes on ISIS in Syria. Even more so when David Cameron does the same.

For different reasons of course. His own colleagues hoping to bury him, and Cameron hoping to keep the opposition divided and impotent for the longest possible time. As with Caesar, such tributes usually come after death. In the case of Corbyn, some would say that he’s joined the ranks of the politically undead.

Should he fail to bring his parliamentary party round to his point of view over Syria, no doubt there will be other opportunities to praise, then bury him. The Oldham by-election is just round the corner, for example.

One thing’s for sure. The would-be assassins in his own party will need to have nerves of steel. Will the disaffected right wing of the party risk the wrath of the all-powerful Len McClusky, leader of Unite, Labour’s biggest trade union backer? Are they prepared to risk targeted deselection campaigns by Corbyn’s supporters?

Depends on their principles, I suppose. Also there will be a number of them thinking that if they can get rid of him now, they will be in a better position to defend their back yards with a new leader in place and four years to prepare for the next election.

Otherwise, they might calculate, better to suffer a quick political death and have those years to prepare for a career outside Parliament than to soldier on through endless bickering, plotting and lip-buttoning.

One thing’s for sure, there will be blood on the Senate floor. Whose blood remains to be seen.

Or, to quote John Lennon:

There’s room at the top they are telling you still

But first you must learn how to smile as you kill

If you want to be like the folks on the hill

Working Class Hero. Copyright Lennon Music