Theresa May has performed a miracle. Her imploding premiership has allowed Jeremy Corbyn to undertake a skilful make-over.
Over the past days, the bedraggled Marxist fanatic has been morphing into an elegant statesman smoothly preaching goodwill to end the Brexit crisis.
If the Government’s meltdown continues and Corbyn’s astute transformation gains traction, Britain faces the prospect of sleepwalking into disaster – heralding the most extreme Left-wing government in the nation’s history.
Overnight, as John McDonnell has promised, Corbyn and his comrades would ‘irreversibly’ change the country – soaking the middle classes, punishing business and opening Britain’s doors to unlimited immigration.
These two men could be leading the country if the Government’s disastrous management of Brexit continues
In contrast to May’s sinking Government, Corbyn and McDonnell have in the past week presented themselves as the reasonable leaders of a united party, despite Labour’s own bitter divisions.
Dressed in his new uniform – blue suit, white shirt and red tie – Corbyn offers compromise while McDonnell utters platitudinous concern in a bank manager’s honey-toned voice.
‘Put aside politics,’ McDonnell said last week on BBC radio – even though in reality he thinks about nothing else.
Their latest disguise is dangerously convincing. Listening to them now, few could imagine how Corbyn and McDonnell have plotted all their lives – through purges, plots and coups – for the chance to seize power.
Alarmingly, amid the aggressive politics unleashed by politicians on both sides of Brexit, Corbyn has positioned himself above the toxic atmosphere. In the Commons and in soft TV interviews, he presents himself as the moderate candidate to be Britain’s next Prime Minister.
Cleverly, he camouflages the menace of his extremist policies – a far, far bigger threat to Britain than any No Deal Brexit.
Mistakenly, many Tories delude themselves that Corbyn’s popularity ratings are so low that he could not win a General Election and is therefore a manageable risk.
They could hardly be more wrong. A Survation poll published yesterday, for example, puts Labour four percentage points ahead of the Conservatives.
And no one should underestimate the Queen’s position if the Government disintegrated and the Tory party disagreed about a new leader and the next Prime Minister – all of which now seem extremely possible.
In that hiatus, the Queen might be obliged to ask Corbyn to form another minority government and he would immediately call for an Election – one in which many disillusioned voters would grasp the appeal of a man promising respite from dishonest politicians.
Many Tories do not see Jeremy Corbyn as a serious risk to their Government, but they could hardly be more wrong
Posing as Mr Reasonable, Corbyn would offer a compassionate vision of relief from austerity and cut-throat capitalism, the construction of millions of new homes, huge wage rises for public servants and the abolition of student loans.
Pitifully, the Tories would be incapable of campaigning to save the country from Corbyn’s other agenda – mass nationalisation, confiscation of private property, legalised squatting, open borders and crippling tax increases propelling an exodus of wealth creators and talent.
Eighteen months ago, I realised the danger of Corbyn’s cultivated ‘good bloke’ image. Anticipating the Brexit crisis, I set out to discover whether his authorised biography was true.
After all, nothing is more important than establishing the character and honesty of a future prime minister.
My resulting book – Dangerous Hero, serialised in The Mail on Sunday – tarnished Corbyn’s halo, revealing how he had deliberately lied about his past.
Dangerous Hero shows how Corbyn deliberately lied about his past
Among the most serious lies was the missing seven months in his youth. Corbyn has always said that he spent two years as a volunteer teacher in Jamaica in the late 1960s.
I discovered that he had left the island after 15 months and gone to Guyana, a centre of Marxist agitation across South America.
During that period, Corbyn became a communist and embarked on his voyage of supporting violent and anti-Semitic groups.
Another lie was his claim that the break-up of his second marriage in 1996 was due to a disagreement about the private education of a son.
In fact, Claudia Bracchitta left him because he had neglected his family and was utterly incompetent with his money.
A third lie was his claim never to resort to personal abuse. Innumerable members of the Labour Party in Hornsey and fellow councillors in Haringey described the hostile language, purges and persecution orchestrated by Corbyn against them during the 1970s. A fourth lie was his claim to be a pacifist.
In truth, Corbyn has supported a succession of brutal terrorists in Africa, South America and especially the virulently anti-Semitic Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East. And of course, he worshipped the IRA.
Then there are the persistent allegations of anti-Semitism – of which his backing for a vile mural caricaturing Jewish bankers and his warning that Jews need to understand British irony are just two of countless supporting examples.
Naturally after Dangerous Hero was published, the Corbynistas at large unleashed a wave of lies and abuse against me – identical to the smears hurled at Luciana Berger and other Labour MPs who resigned from their party not least because Corbyn failed to protect them from his supporters’ hostility.
Long ago, the team of conspirators in Corbyn’s office recognised the opportunity offered by the Tory’s civil war.
Diligently, they stoked the internecine flames. Only belatedly did they recognise one obstacle to success – anti-Semitism. A torrent of ugly revelations has provoked a crisis serious enough to damage Labour’s election chances.
Corbyn has supported a succession of brutal terrorists in Africa, South America and especially the virulently anti-Semitic Hamas and Hezbollah in the Middle East
So Corbyn’s office will have been delighted to see the London-based Middle East Eye, which some have claimed is a pro-Hamas ‘news’ group and which is financed according to the Saudis by Qatar, publishing an attack on my book.
Peter Oborne, the author of the attack, is on record as being an admirer of Corbyn. In 2015, Oborne wrote that he was ‘cheering for Corbyn… a hero of democracy’. Corbyn, Oborne assured his readers, would not ‘jeopardise our national security’ and ‘brings a welcome integrity back to the heart of our politics’.
Oborne acknowledged he called Corbyn’s office for information for his attack and posed 16 questions to me for Middle East Eye, including about my reference to Naz Shah, the Labour MP who applauded the idea of Israel being ‘transported’ to America.
He ignored that Shah had written ‘problem solved’ about such a transport ‘solution’, and posted ‘#ApartheidIsrael’ above the words ‘never forget that everything Hitler did was legal’.
Corbyn had initially appeared to equivocate over Shah’s anti-Semitism when it was exposed in 2016.
Indeed, he appeared to show some sympathy for her. Echoing his Marxist advisers, such as spin doctor Seumas Milne, Corbyn seems to show solidarity with those who believe that Jews have been engaged for centuries in a global conspiracy to exploit the oppressed.
Spin doctor Seumas Milne has been instrumental behind the scenes of Corbyn’s plot for power
Wall Street, Labour’s anti-Semites argue, is a plot to steal the workers’ wealth – led by Jewish bankers.
Importantly, that is the reason why Labour’s anti-Semitism is not just about Jews. In the wider picture, their prejudice fires their dream to ‘irreversibly’ change Britain.
As prime minister, Corbyn has pledged, he would decimate the City and the private ownership of property.
Fulfilling his dream to create a communist society, he would follow the ambitions of his hero, Hugo Chavez, the architect of Venezuela’s self-destruction. Rather than Britain being a country of equal opportunity, he would strive for equality of poverty.
Perhaps the most distressing aspect of the Tory civil war is that the battle of ideologies between the virtues of capitalism and the horrors of communism has been buried.
The most effective Tory allegation against Corbyn remains Amber Rudd’s swipe in a TV debate prior to the 2017 Election. ‘We have to stop thinking there’s a magic money tree,’ she said – hardly a killer blow.
In the days ahead, as Corbyn and McDonnell speak about ‘compromise’, Britons would do well to recall Vladimir Lenin’s sermon that any capitalist’s civil war should be exploited to ‘crush democracy’ and, in its bid to create a genuinely revolutionary state, the leaders’ objective should be to ‘put an end to compromise’.
Britain’s fate is imperilled. Serious politicians need to stop their self-indulgence and join the battle against a group of determined revolutionaries.