Labour may have a new way to do business but the Press, unfortunately does not

The audience for Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech both in the hall and at home was uplifted by the refreshing prospect of manners in politics, as well as by the overdue spelling out of real alternatives to the Camborne mantra of "no alternative". We knew what to expect but it can be so disappointing to be right. Sure enough, the media, from the Today programme onwards, has sought to sew discord, criticism, negativity and nit-picking.

The Murdoch media can always be relied on to do all it can to damage any socialism. So what? But the BBC has once again come out fighting for the mantle of "Most Small-minded Media". "Yes but..." must be the first words of every BBC interviewer; never "congratulations". This may be one reason for the popularity of Twitter etc, for here, whilst there is plenty of criticism and too much rudeness, there is also a healthy measure of good will, support, positivity.

Labour has just elected Jeremy on a wave of popular enthusiasm. He is trying something new - inclusivity; consultation; decency. These cannot be allowed to thrive by media longing only to be destructive, for they know nothing about joy or celebration. How disappointed the commentators will be if Labour under Jeremy actually grows, wins and creates a better country. What will they find to be mean-spirited about then? Do not worry - there will be something.

Let Labour oppose before demanding it governs

During Ed M.'s regime, there was huge frustration in the Party and the country at the snail-like process of deciding and then announcing policy. When it came, it was girt with caution and lacked a governing vision to inspire the electorate. Jeremy Corbyn has been preferred as Leader by Labour supporters because we already understand his vision, at least in part but we do not need a full portfolio of policies this early in the proceedings, as pundits and opponents seem to be demanding.

It is for Jeremy and his delegated team to come up with policies as and when ready, as other leaders before them and in time for a General Election almost 5 years away. But before then, there is a prior responsibility which has been sorely neglected for the last 5 years, which must take precedence over pleasing the baying and unnecessarily critical media hounds: opposition.

Cameron, Osborne, IDS and the rest have got away with an obscene catalogue of destruction of public services, failure of economic management, vicious injury to people's lives and downright lies, almost unchallenged. Jeremy's appeal is that he posits clear alternatives to the measures claimed as essential by Tories and only mildly criticised by the other Labour leadership candidates. When Labour front-benchers daily challenge Tory dogma and lies with real alternatives and pungent critique, Labour will look electable even before a full programme for governing is unveiled. It will and should take time for the latter, for Party management and even succession planning to take shape. Meanwhile, let us hear it for Jeremy Corbyn, Leader of Opposition.

Refugee numbers are big but it is the individuals who matter

It was the books of Lyn MacDonald bringing to life the experiences of soldiers in the Great War which changed everything for me. Studying history, ancient and modern, seemed until then to be all about dates, scale, win or lose. The big story about WW1 was the telephone numbers of casualties. Almost 60,000 on Day 1 of the Battle of the Somme, 19,000 dead. Millions of dead and wounded on both sides. Lions led by donkeys. All these headlines typify how history seemed until it became personal - not for me but for every one of those who experienced the events which make up the narrative. Every unit of statistics is a story - a biography of a person, usually involving other people, who knew, loved, hated or otherwise encountered them. Lives lived, enjoyed, happy, sad, ruined, concluded.

Now, once again, we are in the midst of a numbers storm. Millions of people displaced, hundreds of thousands in camps, tens of thousands perilously crossing seas, thousands of political pawns. Then a picture is published showing a dead boy and we realise that migrants are refugees; refugees are people, individuals who also had lives in their places of origin as bank managers, scientists, engineers, cooks, school-children, with families, friends . How desperate these must have been to leave these lives, to face walking, limping, swimming, starving, with no known destination. Every one a story, a life, a human.

This is why refugees must be found homes among those who have the wherewithal to provide. This is why shutting them out is not appropriate and shows a deficit in leadership and humanity. This is why those who have played a part in creating the chaos the Middle East has become have a duty to those displaced by the deployment of Western arms. What are these individuals supposed to do, who find themselves with nothing, in the middle of alien countrysides, facing hostility, starvation, or a future worse than the ones they fled. This is why we as individuals too should think how to change things.

What do we expect of a leader?

Now that Labour's Leadership process has run its interminable course, we can and must look at what we can learn from it, if only to make next time more sensible. There are many qualities and characteristics of leadership which have been the subject of a thousand books but a democratic political party demands something different. It requires someone to lead not just the organisation but the electorate, whilst allowing constant critique from the latter. S/he must be chosen from a group of egotists, with little in the way of a job description, training or career development.

How can the electorate choose from candidates not shortlisted by any criteria other than their own ambition and the hope of popularity among their colleagues? Leadership in business, military or family is hard enough to define but in politics it is doubly so. A candidate who can command the parliamentary party may put off the electorate; or vice versa. A leader in ideas may lack media charisma. A decisive character may fail to listen or delegate. Whence come skills in selecting a team, in motivating it, in making decisions others would duck, even in dealing with PMQs?

It seems that popular support may even derive not from the qualities or skills of the individual though but from their mere difference. In recent months, leaders and parties have been swept to the fore simply because of who they were not. UKIP claimed to be anti-everything. The SNP was not a Westminster party. Jeremy Corbyn was not an Establishment type. So far from a leader being a prime exemplar of their tribe, perhaps we need the ability to look beyond the obvious and towards game-changers. How do we do that?

This migration is no blip.

In the Stern Report Sir Richard predicted mass migration occasioned by climate change, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. That other apparent causes have triggered this already does not mean that the millions he writes of will no longer arrive; merely that some have started earlier and that we have more to come.

Western Europe is rich, despite the efforts of bankers to cream off the wealth to the Caribbean and elsewhere. It is large and populous but by no means full, as some on the Right would have it. Of course, Western Europe is not the only part of the world to which refugees and others may direct their weary feet. Indeed the failure of some of our so-called allies to open their doors is a disgrace about which our lily-livered governing class fails to act repeatedly.

But others' failure does not exonerate UK from doing the right things: to be generous, reactive and humane, instead of grudging and politically strategic; to collaborate and even take a lead in collaboration in Europe, to make sensible policies for migration instead of looking the other way in a nationalistic and cost-counting funk. Doing things for others is a central tenet of any moral society - which Cameron claims UK to be under his watch. Let him prove it. Migration is here to stay so a permanent, strategic solution had better be developed for the good not only of refugees but of this country. Failure to do so will only mean more unnecessary death, the rise of xenophobic nationalism - and a popular backlash against it which may lead to social breakdown in this country too.