An objective journalist and the guy he definitely isn't mates with. Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images

Reading Owen Jonesâs account of the Corbynite Labour movement, one image in particular stuck in my mind: it is of a young child in a classroom letting off a stink bomb.
As the first malodorous waves reach his nose, and the nostrils of those around him, the perpetrator suddenly panics. The stench is far more toxic and powerful than he had expected, and as the scale of the nasal assault becomes obvious the child attempts to transform himself from culprit to observer, even eyeing up the opportunity to move, in due course, to victim. So it is with Owen Jonesâs This Land, a turgid and strangely dull account of Jeremy Corbynâs leadership of the Labour party.
You might have thought that Jones would be well placed to perform the task. Jones was an early cheerleader for Corbyn, campaigned for him, spoke at his rallies, advised him, served as his most prominent mainstream media defender and was otherwise central to the whole movement.
Sure, that move meant transgressing the boundaries of journalism and political activism, but this was a move already mastered by Jonesâs comrade Russell Brand. When Brand was pinned down on any of his political pronouncements he would say âIâm just a comedianâ. Yet his political pronouncements were only ever taken seriously (to the extent they were) because the stage was given to him as an entertainer.
Similarly, when Jones organises protests outside the offices of papers of which he disapproves and speaks at rallies for his preferred far-left candidates he clearly does so as a political activist. Yet whenever it gets too much for him he slips back into pretending (as he does here) that he is merely a writer, with a dispassionate eye and a judicious historianâs pen.
Perhaps it was inevitable that once the fumes of the Corbyn experiment surrounded him and then (thanks only to the British electorate) dissipated, Jones should try to get away with a book pretending that he was only really an observer of this movement. The desire to get away from the scene of the offence is understandable; what is unforgivable is that the results are so slyly dishonest.
For example, in the chapter on the anti-Semitism controversy Jones is conscious of the tightrope he must walk â trying not to condone the open anti-Semites in Corbynâs movement, but at the same time trying to defend his hero from the most serious accusations. Jones can only do this by re-writing or editing out parts of the story, including his own.
So while he is willing to address and condemn some of the more minor cases of anti-Semitism in the party he at no stage contends with the most serious accusations against Corbyn. There is, for instance, simply no mention of Corbynâs campaign for and support of Samar Alami and Jawad Botmeh, two people imprisoned for bombing the offices of a number of Jewish charities in London. To raise such a thing would mean having to excuse it, condemn it or contend with it. Jones can bring himself to do none of these things.
It is the same with the wreath-laying at the graves of the Munich Olympic terrorists. Jones writes that in 2014 âCorbyn had taken part in a ceremony commemorating the innocent victims of a 1985 Israeli air strike, during which wreaths had been laid for the Palestinians accused of taking part in the terror atrocity at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munichâ. This is characteristically dishonest. First Jones drops in (and mis-portrays) an Israeli action; then he suggests that anybody might find themselves laying a wreath either at or near the graves of such terrorists; and finally there is that little sleight âaccused of taking partâ.
What Jones does not mention in his own role in this controversy. For in 2018, when the Tunisia wreath-laying photos broke, Jones was still the most prominent mainstream media defender of everything Corbyn did.  While fighting to defend his hero Jones tried to minimise the incident, proclaiming on social media âNo one has [presumably he meant âwasâ] killed by a wreath.â
Perhaps Jones the would-be historian is embarrassed by this statement â but in avoiding his own embarrassment he also avoids the job any honest writer would perform. For in precisely such moments lie the problem. In pursuit of their dream of getting a socialist into Downing Street people like Jones were consistently willing to degrade themselves, defame others and otherwise lose any moral sense they still possessed.
There is a rich seam of thought to explore here, but Jones is neither a good enough writer nor an honest enough thinker to perform the task. Perhaps he thinks that both he and the revolution have many more acts left in them â so we read pabulum like the idea that the anti-Semitism crisis could have been lessened if Corbyn had been more willing to âembrace peopleâ.
Elsewhere you get the feeling that Jones wrote his book on social-justice auto-pilot. At the outset we read that his only desire as a writer is âto support struggles against injusticeâ and that as such it is his duty to provide âa clear-eyed assessment of the many failures and mistakes of the Corbyn eraâ. His book does no such thing. The introduction â in which Covid is uneasily squeezed in â concludes with an insistence that âWe can build a world free of injustice, oppression, exploitation, bigotry, racism and violenceâ. But âif our time is to come, then we must learn from our pastâ. There is no evidence that Jones is able to rise to his own tract-like aspirations.
And if writing is indeed where this wounded revolutionary seeks to berth for a while then he should work harder at his art. Throughout his book no clichĂ© goes undeployed. When any victory approaches Corbyn âhurtlesâ towards it. When Corbyn does well it is because âhe came out swingingâ. People who Jones likes are âa force of natureâ. The Labour MP Andrew Gwynne is âan absolute heroâ (for an appearance on the Today programme). By contrast a Liberal Democrat leader is âdropping clangers left, right and centreâ. Under the Conservative Government youth services are âbutcheredâ.
Best is when Jones has to mention someone he cannot stand and is briefly torn between his aspiration to be a chronicler and his urge to engage in the sort of drive-by that really motivates him. Every time the lower urge wins out: Chuka Umunna and other Labour moderates get a swipe every time they appear, but it is Boris Johnson who get the most characteristic, and repetitive, attacks.
On page 260 we can read that Boris Johnson is âuntrustworthy, with a record of dishonesty and lies, and a history of racism, homophobia and bigotryâ. Three pages later we get to read of Johnson again that âhis record of overt homophobic, Islamophobic and generally racist behaviour was unparalleled for a modern British politician of his prominenceâ. Later still we can read that Johnson has âa history of whipping up bigotry against minorities ranging from Muslims to gay peopleâ.
Meantime the party which Johnson leads is accused of having âcarried out what seemed like a systematic programme of deportation from the UKâ over the last decade. It is as though Jones cannot understand why his denunciatory incantations do not seem to have their desired effect. A serious thinker might come to one conclusion; Jones appears to believe that it is because he has not repeated himself enough.
As we go through unimportant policy debates between forgettable people in Corbynâs office there are lacklustre attempts to turn all this into a thrilling narrative. Jonesâs stabs at reportage are occasionally enlivened by colour such as this: one interviewee âstirs a cappuccino in a theatre cafĂ© on Londonâs South Bankâ. Someone else smokes an e-cigarette. We get exclusive interviews with figures as exciting as Andrew Murray and Len McLuskey.
Elsewhere Jones attempts to whip along his narrative (Corbyn runs for leader, Corbyn is challenged from within, Brexit, 2017, 2019 etc) with cliff-hanger chapter endings. So as each chapter closes we are alerted to things that have not happened yet but are about to happen despite the main characters not knowing that they are about to happen, because they have not happened yet. Jones deploys this same technique last used by James Mcintyre and Mehdi Hasan in their truly thrilling 2011 biography of Ed Miliband, Ed: The Milibands and the Making of a Labour leader.
By the conclusion (more Covid shoehorned in) Jones is back to pamphleteer mode. He writes: âHistory will undoubtedly be far kinder to the reluctant Labour leader than the judgement that currently prevails.â Perhaps Jones is confident of this because he believes that he has written the history. He hasnât. He has written a non-tell-all, designed to get himself away from the scene of a stench he was instrumental in unleashing. Perhaps he will get away with it â but we must hope not.
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