Because of my worry about not having an effective parliamentary opposition, I have been following recent political events closely and the vote on engaging in the bombing in Syria will be a pivotal moment for Corbyn, for whilst he will make opposition a party line, he himself defied the party line some 500 times.
Corbyn has certain policies and strategies that it would be difficult for any reasonable person to rail against and to me, it appears to me that Corbyn's main problem is not the media reporting (although that's part of it) but rather the way he has not yet learned to express his points simply and in a way that it is difficult to twist. So, as regards the police reaction to terrorists, he should have simply said what he eventually said: that is, they already have the ability in law to meet force with force. Instead, he expressed a well founded view that the police should respond in a proportionate manner and he would not be in favour of a shoot to kill policy. This opened a door to allow misinterpretation of his remarks as being "soft" on dealing with armed terrorists.
Equally, his opinion about Syria and ISIS is, as I understand it, not to negotiate with ISIS but to assist the Syrians in coming to an agreement to end their civil war and then to deal with ISIS. This is a reasonable concept but he has not put any flesh on the bones of his proposal: how is he going to help bring about the end of the civil war and how does he see an emergent Syrian government dealing with an intransigent ISIS?
He is no longer a backbench MP who can simply be 'against things': he is meant to be a PM in waiting and as such, when he makes policy statements, they must be fully thought through, capable of explanation to the electorate and, preferably, costed. Until he starts doing this and carrying the bulk of the PLP with him, he will be attacked and picked to pieces by the media.
