It's Labour MPs who need to grow a backbone, not Jeremy Corbyn

SPOTTED! Corbyn's backbone on Brexit. Who doesn't love a veggie fry up on Saturday? Still, probably time it was standing up to Theresa May and her botched Brexit by giving the people the final say on the deal. Tell Corbyn to back a people's vote now > https://t.co/70T7fUD95D pic.twitter.com/kQicjIM7oV

— Liberal Democrats (@LibDems) January 26, 2019

"What did you think of the Jeremy Corbyn’s backbone meme?" asks Liberal Democrat Voice.

Like most of the people who have left comments there, my answer is "Not much."

I am all in favour of using humour in campaigning, but it has to be done well. These tweets were not worth the time and effort expended on them.

But the real problem with them tweets was they they were political nonsense.

We were painting Corbyn as someone who is opposed to Brexit but lacks the courage to say so. The truth is more or less the opposite.

Jeremy Corbyn is, as he has always been, opposed to British membership of the European Union. Mark Pack has chapter and verse on this and I once wrote a post about the Labour left's Alternative Economic Strategy of 1976, which is where many of Corbyn's ideas come from.

The reason so many people fail to understand the man's politics is that you have to be pushing 60 to remember when the Labour left was last a force.

Ask any young Corbyn supporter who said this:

[The EEC] is really dominated by Germany. All the common market countries except the UK have been occupied by Germany, and they have this mixed feeling of hatred and subservience towards the Germans.

They will surely tell you it was some absurd old Tory. But it was said by Corbyn's mentor Tony Benn,

The people who do need to show some backbone are the bulk of Labour MPs who come from the party's mainstream.

They ought to resist Corbyn's wish to see Britain leave the EU, but I am not sure they will.

And if any are trembling on the edge of rebellion, a series of comic tweets is not going to convince them to jump.