Donald Macintyre's sketch: Enemies confounded by Jeremy Corbyn's display of respect

Sign up for the View from Westminster email for expert analysis straight to your inbox Get our free View from Westminster email Get our free View from Westminster email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Jeremy Corbyn, at St Paul’s for a Battle of Britain commemoration of the RAF, stood solemnly at all the right moments, including – in what his later statement called “respectful silence” – for “God Save the Queen”. He is a pacifist and not a royalist but he has gone along and stood in the front row.” What’s more, beside revealing that during the Second World War, “My mum served as an air raid warden and my dad in the Home Guard”, Corbyn marked the ceremony with the statement: “The heroism of the Royal Air Force in the Battle of Britain is something to which we all owe an enormous debt of gratitude. The loss of life, both civilian and military, should be commemorated so that we honour their lives and do all that we can to ensure future generations are spared the horrors of war.” As for the national anthem, Corbyn may be understandably uneasy about the bellicose second verse: “Scatter her enemies and make them fall.” Though when he faces gleeful Tories at Prime Minister’s Questions, he may well feel more like singing: “Confound their politics.