Why Corbyn so terrifies the Guardian

 JONATHAN COOK

 

Why Corbyn so terrifies the Guardian

 22 July 2016

Political developments in Britain appear more than a little confusing at the moment.

The parliamentary Labour party is in open revolt against a leader
recently elected with the biggest mandate in the party’s history. Most
Labour MPs call Jeremy Corbyn “unelectable”, even though they have
worked tirelessly to undermine him from the moment he became leader,
never giving him a chance to prove whether he could win over the wider
British public.

Now they are staging a leadership challenge and trying to rig the
election by denying tens of thousands of Labour members who recently
joined the party the chance to vote. If the MPs fail in the coming
election, as seems almost certain, indications are that they will
continue their war of attrition against Corbyn, impervious to whether
their actions destroy the party they claim to love.

Meanwhile, the Guardian, the house paper of the British left – long
the preferred choice of teachers, social workers and Labour activists –
has been savaging Corbyn too, all while it haemorrhages readers and
sales revenue. Online, the Guardian’s reports and commentaries about the
Labour leader – usually little more than character assassination or the
reheating of gossip and innuendo – are ridiculed below the line by its
own readers. And yet it ploughs on regardless.

The Labour party ignores its members’ views, just as the Guardian ignores its readers’ views. What is going on?