The Spectator’s Notes | 14 January 2016

No amount of reports in the press that Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet-making is farcical and his party is divided should distract us from the fact that he is winning. I don’t mean that he will become prime minister, or even (though this seems quite possible) that he will survive as leader until the general election. It is just that he is gradually bringing more and more of Labour under his control, and grinding down his opponents. Besides, his public positions are coherent — in the sense of being internally consistent — and he is quite accomplished at adhering to an undeviatingly hardline, left-wing ideology while sounding mild and decent. Taxed, on Monday, by Nick Robinson about his support for terrorism, Mr Corbyn was able fiercely to declare that he detested terrorist attacks on ‘civilians’. (Sometimes, he and his like refer to ‘innocent civilians’.) ‘Civilians’, you see, are not to blame for bad policy or for enforcing the will of the capitalist West.