Dear sir
I am writing this to highlight two things that I consider to be important, even critical, to your continued success as the focus of so many people’s hope of change to our society and political system.
A significant majority of my friends voted for you and support you now because they and I feel you are the best hope we all have for breaking the stranglehold the old political establishment has over British democracy and for restoring many things that the people of this county think important, things which are dismissed by most of our political class.
Millions of people have been energised by your standing for the Labour leadership, most of whom had long since abandoned politics as being unrepresentative of them, as being corrupt and undemocratic and of being nothing more than a system for electing out of touch oligarchs to rule over us.
One of the key differences we saw in you was the presence of something normally so absent in our politicians, I speak here of principles and beliefs, of a determination to stand for those things that you held dear and not spin or twist your opinions based on the latest focus group or what your advisers considered the public view of the hour.
You have made no secret of your personal opinion regarding the existence or lack thereof, of god or gods, you have made no secret of your view that an unelected monarchy is not something that should exist in the 21st century. Both of these views are things that you have strongly upheld over the years and these are views that you upheld at the Battle of Britain memorial event.
The old media has been loud in denouncing you for a lack of respect because you chose to stand in silence rather than sing the national anthem, a song that in truth is a dirge, heavily Christian and supporting the monarchy and most strongly associated with British football games.
Had you sung it you would have been called a hypocrite in exactly the way that your future membership of the privy council is being used against you as a lifelong republican.
Many of us fully support your dignity and respect at the event, to stand silent, alone with your thoughts and to show the respect earned by the brave people who fought and died to defend this nation. Even the old media front pages that condemned your silence showed a senior minister of the government so bored with the proceedings that he spent his time looking around for a camera to present his best side to.
But rather than mention that our government had just passed yet another act in the ongoing political agenda determined to make the poor ever poorer and the rich ever richer through changes to benefits the old media instead took the opportunity to attack you, again. As they have been doing for months and are continuing to do.
I am hearing that spokespersons for the Labour party are telling people that you will sing the anthem in future, that you are going to throw away lifelong ideals and heed the words of the spin doctors, media and marketing experts and consultants that are no doubt trying to turn you into a clone of the rest of our political class. Has someone told you to shave your beard yet, they will.
But you should remember something, the people advising you to do this or that, to act like a proper politician, to not rock the boat, to fit in, they are the same sort of people who were advising Miliband and Burnham and Kendal and Cooper. People who have something in common, they all LOST the support of the electorate by being out of touch and unrepresentative of the voters and the people.
These are the advisors and consultants whose opinions have led not just Labour but most of our politicians to become distant, even hated by the population. A political class well know as liars, cheats, widely regarded as untrustworthy, fickle, spouting statistics designed to deceive and never answering a question honestly or fairly. These are the advisors behind the most un-trusted group in British society, the advisors behind the politician class. Do you really want to listen to such people?
Look at the recent event where a well known and highly experience BBC reporter destroyed her own reputation in thirty seconds. An entire career bought into disrepute because she was either following her own politics or obeying the orders of her bosses to follow the political agenda of the beeb. She twisted and spun what she had just been told and was called on it, on TV, her response that she was joking made it even worse. Her integrity is gone, everything she has said in the past becomes untrustworthy, was she spinning the facts, was she joking, who can tell. For a reporter on a major TV news organisation to lie and then claim she was only joking is shocking, both because she may think it somehow acceptable to act like that but also because her employer, the BBC has, by its silence endorsed her behaviour.
Her career is looking rocky now, how desperate is a politician going to be to allow themselves to be interviewed by a woman who could twist their words to misrepresent what they said for politics or just for a joke.
The same will be said of you Mr Corbyn, if you bow to old media pressure and sing a song calling on god to maintain the power of the monarchy. Once you throw away your integrity it is gone forever, it doesn’t matter that it was over something bog or something small, gone is gone and you will have abandoned one of the key reasons why people have chosen to follow you and support you.
In short you will be acting like any other politician and once you start doing that we will treat you as just another politician. We don’t want that, we want the hope that our old political establishment can be changed, we want the hope that you can either do it or open the door for others to do it. We didn’t support or vote for just another politician, we voted for a man who has rebelled against his own party because his principles were more important than a political agenda, that is what we voted for, please don’t abandon those principles, please don’t abandon your supporter after they placed their faith in you.
This brings me to a second and equally important matter. The Old media and their ongoing campaign against you. You have experienced firsthand the attitude that is endemic in our modern media, the arrogance that they are in charge and that everyone else is subject to their power.
Over the years our old media has developed a considerable tin pot dictator attitude as politician after politician, desperate for a sound bite or a few seconds of publicity, have crawled on their knees across broken glass to give an interview or to tolerate any abuse simply to get another 30 seconds of screen time.
Driven on by a desperate need to scoop each other our old media have resorted to bullying, intimidation and sundry criminal acts for which they are barely given a slap on the wrist and a few months holiday before being returned to the jobs they lost because of the crimes they committed.
The old media is a monster, driven on by its hunger and if you feed it then it will never go away, if you bow down to it you will never be free of it, if the reporters who hound you and block your way and thrust cameras in your face force you to stop and give them an interview or to answer their repeated questions when and where THEY WANT then you have lost and they have won because if they succeed the first time they will simply do it again and again.
Instead I would ask you a question here, something which you are either not doing or if you are then it is not being communicated.
Where is your presence in the new media? Where is your personal web page as leader of the opposition, where is your blog, where is your Youtube channel?
The old media are acting as your enemy and until they start behaving as journalists and not hate mongers trying to destroy you they should be treated as such, but people want to hear your views, they want to hear your voice and your opinions. So where are you putting your words.
Most people in the UK have access to the internet so where is your presence for these people?
You have strong support across all of society and in particular among the younger sections that have long since been abandoned or actually penalised by old establishment politicians, there is a vast pool of talent and imagination out there that can help you, people who can set up web sites and blog pages, people who can live stream your speeches and post them where millions can see the unedited truth rather than some cut and paste hatched job from a Murdoch minion.
The old media are acting like an enemy so treat them as such. When you give speeches and presentations either don’t allow the reporters and cameras in or push them to the back. Give priority to the locals and to one or two people live streaming the event to sites online and to be posted for later viewing.
Develop the habit of posting your thoughts and opinions, perhaps daily, onto a blog so that people can hear your words from you not a twisted mockery of what you say from Sky or the BBC. We live in the information age, embrace it, work with it, ask for help and take your ideals online in a way that challenges the biased politics of the old media.
With a media openly hostile to you, 60% of the Labour election voters chose you. How much more can you achieve with fair online coverage? You have a message, people want to hear it but the old media are acting as a road block, go around them, go over them or go through them, don’t allow them to own you, make them come to you asking would you please grant them an interview on your terms.
You will have advisers telling you that you need the media, you do need media to put across your views but it doesn’t have to be the old media. You asked for questions and PMQs and tens of thousands responded, ask for help to set up a widespread powerful online presence and I’m sure people will respond.
Get yourself online and out in the world, speak for yourself and leave the old media where they live these days, in the gutters.