Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dissing Corbyn shows he’s on a downward curve

Picture this: It’s Sunday evening and Jeremy Corbyn is at home, damson jam simmering away on the hob as he sorts through his mail from the week – Allotments Quarterly, his new copy of “The Customs Union for Dummies” straight from Amazon – and the telephone rings. It’s rising star of the Democrats, freshman congresswoman, luminary of the young left, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez!

Cue a brief phone call between the pair on how they intend to save the world. After this, Jeremy Corbyn tweeted:  “Great to speak to @AOC on the phone this evening and hear first hand how she’s challenging the status quo. Let’s build a movement across borders to take on the billionaires, polluters and migrant baiters, and support a happier, freer and cleaner planet.”

To which Ocasio-Cortez replied: “It was an honor to share such a lovely and wide-reaching conversation with you, @jeremycorbyn! Also honored to share a great hope in the peace, prosperity and justice that everyday people can create when we uplift one another across class, race, and identity both at home and abroad.”

All was going swimmingly so far – until in the US a Jewish journalist and activist responded to AOC: “I’m a huge huge fan of yours. I hope you’ll take a look at the amount of Jews trying to call attention to Corbyn’s long, documented history of anti-Semitism. The left’s blind spot in this regard can still be fixed. But we need leaders like yourself to listen.”

AOC, proving she is no fool, and realising that she has Jewish supporters, was quick to respond: “Thank you for bringing this to me. We cannot and will not move forward without deep fellowship and leadership with the Jewish community. I’ll have my team reach out.”

Eek. What was set to be a great publicity stunt for Britain’s leader of the opposition had backfired. The rising star of the Democrats made a slight misstep and corrected it. More concerning for Corbyn, however, is how the incident revealed the total irrelevance outside the UK of a supposed national leader in-waiting.

Asking an American friend what he made of the whole exchange, he said that it was sad to see someone like Ocasio-Cortez (young and positive) align herself temporarily with Corbyn. And he was shocked to learn of Corbyn’s particular views on Israel, being careful to emphasise that they are extremely out of line with the mainstream US. But most importantly, he pointed out: “It’s probably not meaningful overall because no one in the US knows who Corbyn is.”

He won’t like that! For all Corbyn’s pretences to be an internationalist politician – didn’t he engineer the Northern Irish peace process? – he is remarkably parochial. Former Labour leaders had a hotline to the White House and Capitol Hill. Even when a president, Ronald Reagan, humiliated Labour leader Neil Kinnock during a visit to Washington in the 1980s, on the Hill were plenty of Democrats of the time interested in foreign links with a mainstream leader from the British left.

Now, despite supposedly centring his focus on global debates (Palestine, Northern Ireland, Venezuela), Corbyn seems to have little impact or resonance. Not only was he proud to show off his exchange with AOC, AOC herself demonstrated that she doesn’t really know anything about him – and when she found out she backed away.

For all the Corbynite talk of their man being part of a global left movement, his attitudes are still too extreme to make him congenial or an ally.

His position on Israel is considered extreme in the US context. Consider the role of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee – a bipartisan organisation that lobbies Congress on bills always jointly sponsored by Democrats and Republicans. Their influence shouldn’t be understated – its 2016 conference was attended by both nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, as well as Joe Biden and Paul Ryan. They provide a pretty good litmus test on the mainstream Israel position in the US. Which, funnily enough, doesn’t exactly capture Corbyn’s views.

It is interesting though that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a politician obsessed with public image – initially had no qualms in associating herself with the Labour leader. She simply didn’t know anything about him.

In taking the call, AOC too made a blunder. It could just be the product of a poor research department – or possibly something more sinister. Both the left here and in the states suffer from the same pathology – believing that because of their general commitment to left-wing politics they must be a priori on the same page. A complete unthinkingness – we are basically in the same camp, on the side of “justice”, so we must both buy into the same programme. Only they don’t.

Oh well. Not good for either of them. But AOC is a politician on the rise who will smooth out this blip in no time. Corbyn’s surge was 18 months ago and is receding into the distance. His party is mired in the anti-Semitism crisis and behind in the polls. It is hard to avoid the conclusion that without a change of fortunes he is a leader on a downward trajectory.