How could jeremy corbyn behave so stupidly? | thearticle

Did Jeremy Corbyn call Theresa May a “stupid woman”? Yes, of course he did: not only have a long list of lip-readers, led by the great deaf percussionist Evelyn Glennie, assured us that he

did, but from what we know of the Labour leader’s past curmudgeonly conduct, the remark is entirely in character. If he did, does it matter? That’s harder to answer and opinion, not least

among women, is more divided. Parliament faces momentous decisions — and all that our representatives seem to care about is a crass comment by one of their number that many will consider not

so much misogynistic as just plain rude. Yet casual sexism is always ugly; and when the culprit happens to be the most moralising, sanctimonious Leader of the Opposition anyone can

remember, it is important to demand an apology, even if the process resembles a wisdom tooth extraction. Jeremy Corbyn’s entourage, led by the former Guardian columnist Seumas Milne, has

created a carapace of cool around their hero that has so far proved bullet-proof. The thick dossier of evidence that Corbyn is an anti-Semite does not seem to have dented his image in the

eyes of his cultish fan club. But “stupid woman” is an insult that more or less everyone can agree is unacceptable. During the 2010 election campaign the then Prime Minister Gordon Brown was

accidentally recorded in his car telling an aide that a lifelong Labour voter, Mrs Gillian Duffy, who had asked him about immigration was “just a bigoted woman”. Not only was Brown forced

to apologise in person, but he paid a heavy price at the polls. Even worse, though, is a failure to apologise. David Cameron refused to apologise for telling Angela Eagle to “calm down,

dear” in the Commons. The whiff of misogyny, added to his Old Etonian condescension, made for an unattractive combination and the then Prime Minister acquired a reputation for arrogance. He

also failed to promote enough women or get them into winnable seats. Just six out of 23 members of the Cabinet are now women — including, of course, the Prime Minister. But Labour too has a

“woman problem” — and it isn’t just about Jeremy Corbyn. The party has never had a female leader and still shows no sign of electing one, while the Tories have had two. The Corbynistas who

now dominate the Labour machine are overwhelmingly male, as the hard Left always has been. That institutional bias is not going to change any time soon. So what should be done about Corbyn’s

refusal to acknowledge that he muttered a sexist remark about our second woman Prime Minister? The Speaker, John Bercow, is hardly the man to put it right, having used precisely the same

insult about Andrea Leadsom, the Leader of the House — and, as she pointedly reminded him, still owes her an apology. The best way to deal with an impenitent male chauvinist is surely to use

a little gentle irony. Since Corbyn apparently believes that he is more intelligent than “stupid” Theresa May, perhaps someone should remind him that while she merely attended St Hugh’s

College, Oxford, he failed to pass a single A-level (he achieved two Es) at his grammar school and dropped out of North London Polytechnic without a degree. (Moreover, Corbyn is now on his

third wife, while Mrs May is still married to her first husband.) If one of these two politicians is intellectually challenged, it isn’t the woman. Indeed, there is only word to describe men

like Corbyn. Men who have such bad manners that, even when they know they are in the wrong, they don’t even have the grace to admit it. Men who are so in denial about their discourtesy that

they prefer to brazen it out by blaming the victim. Men who are so hypocritical that they refuse to believe that they could possibly be guilty of any form of prejudice because that would be

“against their principles”, even when the evidence is obvious to all. That word is “stupid”.