NEW YORK -- Alastair Campbell has said David Cameron’s attack on Jeremy Corbyn was "not fair" though likely “effective.” Speaking in Manchester on Wednesday, the prime minister accused the Labour leader of holding a “Britain-hating ideology.”
Suggesting that Corbyn thought the death of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy,” Cameron countered: "A tragedy is nearly 3,000 people murdered one morning in New York. A tragedy is the mums and dads who never came home from work that day. A tragedy is people jumping from the towers after the planes hit. My friends -- we cannot let that man inflict his security-threatening, terrorist-sympathising, Britain-hating ideology on the country we love.”
Speaking to HuffPost Live later that day, the former Labour communications chief, who is in the US to promote his book ‘Winners: And How They Succeed,’ said Cameron’s message was a clear indication of how the Tories will go after their rival.
“I said before Corbyn was leader that now he’s in the big league, he’ll discover the past is not a foreign country and everything he’s done and everything he said is going to be brought up.” Referring to Cameron’s speech, Campbell said “we’ve seen there how they are going to attack him. And the reality is there is quite a lot to attack.”
Campbell said Corbyn supporters have accused him of being “totally obsessed about winning,” but added that in politics he is. “It is what I’m obsessed about because I don’t like the Conservatives, I don’t like David Cameron being prime minister, I don’t like the stuff they’re doing with welfare and I don’t like all the stuff they’re doing with the health service.”
Yet Campbell said he remained “unpursuaded” that Corbyn can win the next general election. “On his position that Britain should come out of NATO... that on its own is enough to lose an election,” he said, noting that “policy positions” rather than ”rhetoric,” or the “great speeches that get the new members going” is what is important. “It’s about what you say you would do if you were prime minister,” he added.
On speaking to some of the thousands of new members that joined the Labour Party during Corbyn’s candidacy, Campbell said “it was almost by electing him they’d already ended austerity and changed the world.”
“They haven’t,” he added. “You can’t change the world in politics unless you’re in power.”
Also on HuffPost Live on Wednesday, film director Danny Boyle, a long-standing supporter of left-wing politics, gave his view of the new opposition leader. Watch that clip below: