"A Jeremy Corbyn of the Right"?

One of this country's most prominent commentators is a lifelong trade unionist who opposes the upcoming Trade Union Bill.

He wants to renationalise the railways, the utilities and the Royal Mail, with the publicly owned trains (including, of course, the mail trains) running on electricity generated by publicly owned power stations using the coal from publicly owned mines right here on this very island, which stands on vast reserves of that black gold.

Therefore, he profoundly regrets the destruction of the British coal industry, which is one of his many searing criticisms of the Thatcher years, another being that the sale of council housing created all manner of problems that bedevil us to this day.

One suspects that he might have voted for the SDP in 1983, but he is on record as having voted Labour in 1987. He has been an active member of the Labour Party in his time, and even of the Co-operative Party during that period.

But he has never been a paid-up Conservative, and one is not aware that he has ever even voted for them at a General Election, if at any kind of election.

He can be highly critical of the BBC, although he is on it often enough, but he is fiercely committed to the principle of it, and even to the continuation of the license fee. He despises the effect of Rupert Murdoch on this country's culture and polity.

He has opposed every British military intervention in at least 20 years, and every proposed erosion of civil liberties by Governments of all three parties. He wants to scrap Trident.

He proposes détente and even co-operation with Iran, and the rooting out of the influence of Saudi Arabia. Immensely familiar with Russia, he abominates the prospect of a new Cold War.

He holds that Tony Benn, Peter Shore, Michael Foot and Barbara Castle were right all along about the EU, as he himself has also been. He demonstrated against Enoch Powell, and he continues to defend his decision to do so.

He is a professed admirer of Dennis Skinner, of Jeremy Corbyn and of George Galloway, despite disagreeing with Skinner and Corbyn on certain social issues (less so with Galloway, or with large numbers of Galloway's voters from Bethnal Green to Bradford).

His views on most of those issues are shared by signatories to Corbyn's nomination papers who have every intention of voting for him, as they are by such signatories to the nomination papers of each of the other candidates for Leader of the Labour Party.

Peter Hitchens calls for a Jeremy Corbyn of the Right. But that is not the same as suggesting that he himself would have very much in common with such a figure.

Even to the point of being C of E to Campbell's RC, Peter Hitchens is more like a posh Ronnie Campbell.