It's been a funny old Labour leadership race, hasn't it? We've got a post-retirement age, tie-less, bearded socialist who hit his prime during the 1980s (retro, right?) up against an obscure Labour MP from Wales who claims to be 'just as radical' as his opponent despite the fact that it was less than 10 years ago that he proclaimed himself an adherent to Blairism, an ideology more likely to appeal to Conservatives than socialists, and who only a few weeks ago found his campaign caught up in a misogyny row following a promise to 'smash' Britain's new Prime Minister 'back on her heels'.
And whilst I still staunchly maintain that the leadership challenger, Owen Smith (pictured below), announces policies according to a wheel of fortune on his desk that he gives a spin every morning, on Tuesday the leadership battle took yet another turn for the comical.
In what I'm sure struck the perpetrator as pure genius at the time and everyone else as refined idiocy about two hours later, as the incumbent Labour leader, Jeremy Corbyn, traveled north to Newcastle on the train from London, his team took the opportunity to video their leader squatting on the floor of a train carriage due to an apparent lack of unused unreserved seats. In the video, Corbyn took the opportunity to advocate for the renationalisation of the railways by saying: 'The reality is there's not enough trains, we need more of them.' But it wasn't too long after the publication of this endearing video that head of the Virgin brand, Richard Branson, took to Twitter with a video of his own which would thoroughly embarrass Corbyn and his team. In the CCTV footage, Corbyn is shown to be returning to a train seat for the two hour remainder of the journey following the filming of the video. Virgin also revealed that seats were available prior to the filming of the video.
Political differences aside, I think it was terribly kind of Jeremy to have taken the media bullet instead of Owen Smith for a change. Smith decided to tweet his gratitude for all the nation to behold by assuring us that his campaign remained 'on track'.