Martin Amis reckons Corbyn is ‘too uneducated’ to lead Labour. What a fool.
Martin Amis: For a novelist – and academic – you’d expect him to be more broadminded.
This Writer does not approve of this academic snobbery. But then, I happen to have one E at A-level myself.
It doesn’t make me – or Mr Corbyn – any less worthwhile than Mr Amis. Put us in a room together and the noticeable difference would be Martin’s superciliousness.
Jeremy Corbyn isn’t clever enough to lead Labour because he only got two Es in his A-levels, a top writer has claimed.
Baffled left-wingers have rounded on Martin Amis after he launched his attack with the words: “The humourless man is a joke”.
Source: Jeremy Corbyn ‘too uneducated to lead Labour’ because he got 2 Es at A-level says author Martin Amis
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
There are no formal qualifications or training to be in politics. I don’t see why Cameron’s PPE from Oxford makes him qualified to be Prime Minister – being in the academic bubble does nothing for dealing with issues in the real world (and I speak as someone with a degree).
Please don’t think I’m being rude or unsupportive as I think what you do is very much needed especially with what we are all having to endure under our present government.
I am just wondering though if 26 emails from you in less than 2 days is really necessary.
It is almost like ‘spam’ which I know it obviously isn’t but I think so many updates dilute the message you’re trying to get across . . .
All the very best
Paul
This is a site based on what’s happening in the world, and there’s a lot happening right now.
You don’t have to read it all. I certainly pick and choose what to read, from the material that gets sent to me by commercial sources.
(Of course, you might miss something important, but that’s up to you. What’s important to me is that I don’t miss something important.)
I haven’t read the article but heard this was to be Amis’s latest bandwagon attempt to undermine Corbyn. The problem with Amis is he comes over as a pompous self absorbed snob too clever for his own good. Does he not realise Corbyn was democratically elected not because he was Einstein but people saw him speak, listened to his views and didn’t want any more clever spinners like Blair and his chums. The policies are true socialist views unlike Blair and people want a party to stand up for them as they have been overlooked and castigated by clever politicians who are different shades of beige. Amis is out of step with so many as are all the Blairites who become participants in a party stolen from the rightful ordinary working and yes , less educated supporters. Too many have lost their voice politically, the left has been made impotent in the party and at that time Blair and his.droids were happy. Now that the roles have reversed they cannot adhere to democracy after only 2 months! Yet people who thought Blair had changed Labour for good was fooling themselves. Blair is all that is wrong with politics, as Cameron really adopts his play book Danzcuk thinks he can become a martyr by his constant anti democratic whining and wants the leadership to throw him out or remove the whip. They will not fall for it as the Sun/Mail contributor reveals his increasing failure to grasp the groundswell who want the party to fight Toryism not get in bed with it. Danzcuk will drive his own constituents to the point where he is ostracised and not expressing Labour policies, which are not extreme, not as extreme as this governments. Those who like Amis think it is clever to demean Corbyn are privileged and out of touch. Corbyn and McDonnell have so many experts in their fields on board. Does Amis really see our pig friend and Osborne as super intelligent and full of attractive traits? Corbyn has had constant attack from Blairites and nonsensical rubbish day after day from the Tory right wing press, over the last couple of months since his resounding victory. These people are behaving like spoils youngsters used to deceiving the people and keeping the status quo. Their problem is they had a cosy little arrangement, not touched by the austerity attacks and not truly allied to the real wealth of a country that gives its people a welfare state and NHS. Oblivious until the support for Corbyn grew and grew and then panic from all of them, Blair adding the first blow which worked in favour of Corbyn’s campaign. Blair is the equivalent of something you tread in in the street. Corbyn opposed him and this will add to his standing when Chilcott appears ( assuming we are still alive then ).
I suspect his sales are down. No better way of getting attention than attacking someone very popular.
He’s obviously seen how much PR Katie Hopkins has been getting recently & decided to try it himself.
Got to be honest I’ve read three of his novels & they have all left me cold.
It could be I’m also uneducated, but I suspect it’s more emperors new clothes.
Compared to Rohinton Mistry or Peter Carey I found him very droll.
“Curious or unusual in a way that provokes dry amusement”?
I must say his novels never appealed. He comes across as rather embittered to me.
I did read the article before seeing this. I am pretty much in agreement with Amis about Corbyn. I had thought that he was adopting the softly sofly approach at PMQs due to his slowness of mind and inability to handle anything more combative. I had previous views regarding Corbyn anyway. My son attended a school not far from Corbyn stamping ground. He came to visit and a couple of pupils were chosen to interview him. One of them was my son. I remember him coming home and saying how unimpressed was with Corbyn and assumed it must be easy to become an MP. My son went on to study International Politics at University not far from Mr Sivier. He is now doing a post grad degree in Global politics. His opinion of Corbyn has not changed.
You are, of course, perfectly entitled to follow Mr Aimless in his opinion of Jeremy Corbyn. Just don’t expect to pick up any agreement from the readership of this blog, who can tell a snob when they see one.
And yes, they would probably find an alternative word in their lexicon, with which to replace ‘snob’.
I would’t think that thinking Corbyn was unintelligent had anything to do with being a snob. My son’s school was in Corbyn’s constituency and it was about six years ago. It was just a normal comprehensive.
Don’t twist my words, please. It is the fact that Amis made his claim based on the fact that Corbyn had two poor A-level results that makes him a snob – and a patronising one at that.
Hayfords, you’re a snob, so it’s natural you prefer to side with another. Amis is a narcisist and admits to being very right wing. On Corbyn or any other matter, I wouldn’t expect Amis to do/ say anything else, to be honest, and no-one actually cares about his drivel, written or reported. He is irrelevant, and doesn’t even live in the UK. Why does he have a dismissive, bitter view of Corbyn? Why do you? Do I actually care?
Neither of you could hold a light to Corbyn’s work, measured by making a difference to peoples lives, striving for the better, being able to communicate and win people to his views. I would suggest if you want an intellectual foray into research done on intelligence and politics, you should look up the papers by Hodson & Nosek.
Please can everyone confine their remarks to the subject matter, rather than personal attacks on other commenters?
(You can say what you like about Martin Amis, mind – he is the subject matter.)
Apologies Mike, if I appear to have crossed a line here, but beyond the first three words which were indeed guided by your own use of the term Snob, the rest was about Amis, and Hayward as the self-selected echo chamber of Amis’s right wing views.
However, Hayward’s remarks are insulting to many, not just against Corbyn but for all walks of life, and Hayward himself does not stick to Amis, but lists his family achievements, which I suppose we are to stand in awe of, (but attracted no admonishment for not sticking to Amis).
We can all do that. My Dad left school at 14, apprenticed in 1945, but through the Labour movement and his innate intelligence, became a professor of economics & politics, published author, I myself got about the same as Corbyn and have a PhD and published, too, IQ tested to the top 0.1 percentile. Don’t normally give it a second thought BTW, but even you point out your own similar A level background and the irrelevance to your current life & massive achievements in battles with the DWP and as a professional journalist, and introduce the word snob too, so perhaps you were also a little insulted, as you don’t normally refer to your own personal life. In fact, I consider myself as an equal anyone, irrespective of exam success or lack of, as getting an E at A level could well have been the high point in my own life, not a starting point under different circumstances, like having a student loan and not a grant, or indeed when young being made to feel inferior by a snob. We both know the views of Amis on Corbyn, or any of us, are deeply flawed on many levels. It feeds the useful idiots though.
I count a total of 11 words that can be considered directly addressed to Hayward, including “both” him & Amis, “neither” him or Amis, ie addressing the Amis issues, and a suggested line of legitimate work on intelligence and politics, suitable reading for someone who thinks that Amis’ allegation that Corbyn is not intelligent enough to lead based on an A level has any weight. Hodson used several measures of intelligence, from childhood to adulthood, as well as several indicators of right-wing leanings, including racism, and comprehension of the written word, and the belief on one’s own superiority (inverse to intelligence in the main population, and significantly linked to right-wing authoritarian views). But I assume you know that. Amis is an ex-pat snob, narcissistic, deeply flawed, proudly very right wing and prefers USA to the UK, because the literary circles here have little time for his antics. I could have put this all into the initial reply, but I thought it might be too long and too boring for the flow. So I followed your lead, and added my views too, and tried to be brief.
It’s your blog, and so of course I accept and respect your rules, but perhaps we can have a level playing field? I expect you to mod / remove this BTW. Not interested in public self-justification, but there are occasions where I feel there has been a leap to judgement………
I was asking everybody involved to stick to the subject, rather than move to personal attacks.
Before Thatcher there were many Labour Prime Ministers who were “too uneducated”. But, it didn’t matter, because Labour Party policy-making is part of a collective endeavour{e.g. by Amis’s standards J.Gallaghan(Labour PM 1975-1978)-later Lord Gallaghan would have been classed as “too uneducated”}!!!!
Are you saying Callaghan would have been “too uneducated” by Aimless’s standards because he couldn’t afford entrance to university?
Of course, that adds a whole new level to the author’s snobbery.
But,I agree with Hayfords. Corbyn was adopting a soft approach to PMQs. Corbyn was acting like a “chat show host” instead of being “The Leader of Her Majesty’s Official Opposition” during PMQs. If he continues like that, it will be bad for democracy!!!
You may be in a minority there. I tend toward the more widely-held belief that Corbyn was cleverly using understatement to show up Cameron as the posturing play-actor he really is, whose claims don’t stand up to rational examination.
Camoron was just playing Eton/Oxford debating games with no thought for the people that were being affected by his callousness. Corbyn is what politics should be about and I believe he is starting to win this.
This is all about Amis not being in the headlines and for someone like him he has to resort to this underhand way of raising his media profile. Most people in the UK won’t know or even care about Amis. By the way I note that he only obtained a Masters rather than a Doctorate if he’s talking about qualifications.
Amis seems to be wounded by his own father’s lack of interest in him, and especially dismissive of his literary efforts. (It is likely that had he not been the author “Sir” Amis’s son, he may not have been published.) So he will assume any spurious air of authority, especially have journos & “the set” of the literati in London pay him attention, because that’s what he craves. He is opining on Corbyn because there is no way as an author or indeed a “personality” he would get more than a couple of lines in the book reviews buried deep inside the papers. It actually demonstrates how powerful Corbyn has become, as a leader of Labour, and as an inspiration for political change.
I think his surname should be ‘Amiss’ ie as in something is with him. His scorn for Corbyn is not unusual within his social class where even the thickest idiot gets an A level or 2 because the parents are paying a fortune and the teachers will get it if they do not get the kid some qualifications somehow. All the qualifications this lot have are due to tiny class sizes, paying pushy parents who create hell if their child does not get results etc It is the way our country works and even the cleverest not rich person will struggle in a system designed for and by the wealthy elite in charge.
Noreen you are absolutely right; “even the cleverest not rich person will struggle…”. In Cameron’s Britain(unfortunately), it is who you know rather than what you know that matters!!! That is why our country(the UK) is unable to get out of the recession!!!
Don’t forget that Corbyn’s parents paid for him to attend a private prep school and that he then went on to a grammar school.
This is all beside the point, which is that Amis is wrong to judge Corbyn on the basis of his educational qualifications.
It sickens me to hear Martin Amis decrying Jeremy Corbyn. At last we have a man of honest convictions on the scene. A man of principles who believes in adhering to international laws, a man who believes that War Criminals like Bush, Blair,Obama, Cameron and Netanyahu should be put on trial at the Hague for their mindless attacks on sovereign states resulting in the deaths of thousand of innocent citizens who never even asked for intervention. The total smashing of all infrastructure in the countries attacked are the acts of Colonial minded baffoons. Amis back from his ‘American Adventure’ says he is disturbed by anti Israeli and American feeling in Britain, well Mr Amis this has come about through the ‘Whistle Blowers’ and the likes of Jeremy Corbyn. Truths have been revealed through them and the likes of RT. Folk realise that 80% of Parliament support the illegal state of Palestine and that a corrupted UN has been complicit in the original theft in 1947 and is still complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous Palestinian population. We fought a war from 1939 to 1945 in order to reinstate stolen lands to dispossessed nations and then the UN led by the USA and the UK sanctioned the theft of 75% of Palestine by Bengurion and his band of Jewish terrorists. It was the crime of that century, perpitrated by West on a defenceless indigenous population. We should all be ashamed of ourselves for allowing it .No Mr Amis’ the likes of you would be more at home amidst your Neocon associates and you can shove all those books you have written where the ‘Sun Don’t Shine’ whilst you are at it.
I can’t say I agree with you choice of words regarding the issue of the Holy Land. Everything else, sure – but I think Mr Corbyn would agree that the only way to create any lasting peace there is by peaceful discussion – not hurling blame left, right and centre, no matter how well-deserved you, I or anyone else might consider it to be.