The married Marxist ladies’ man who pulls Corbyn’s strings and the troubling links of the blonde lawyer he was caught groping . . . Guy Adams

OUR Political class dropped everything else to campaign in the run-up to the EU referen - dum — the most important vote in this country for generations.

How curious, therefore, to discover that Jeremy Corbyn temporarily withdrew from the campaign trail, just seven weeks before polling day , to conduct a lobbying campaign that had nothing to do with Europe.

on May 3, 2016, Corbyn hosted an event in Westminster in support of the somewhat obscure cause of ‘ democratic reform’ in Western Papua New Guinea.

Among those present was Benny Wenda, a tribal elder sporting a feathered head- dress and who has for years been calling for his native province to be granted independence from Indonesia.

Then Corbyn gave a speech, insisting that human rights in P apua New Guinea would be ‘central to our party’s policies in the future’. He said this little -known political struggle was now ‘fundamentally what we’re all about.’

Sure, Western Papuan independence seemed a worthy cause. But at a time when Britain faced such a big political decision, many Labour colleagues felt Corbyn should have been putting his shoulder behind the Remain campaign rather than fretting about a territory 8,600 miles away.

So how do we explain Corbyn’s sudden interest in South Pacific politics?

one possible answer lies in the identity of two key organisers of this gathering.

one, who can be seen tapping away on his mobile phone in video footage of proceedings, was Corbyn’s all-powerful 59-year-old spin doctor, Seumas Milne.

The other, who was standing directly behind the Labour leader was Mr W enda’s lawyer, a glamorous 36-year-old called Jennifer Robinson.

Fast-forward 14 months, and the relationship between Milne and Robinson is suddenly the talk of London’s political class.

For this week , photographs were published in newspapers which show the pair enjoying a clinch on the terrace of the fashionable Courthouse Hotel in Shoreditch, East London.

Taken by a member of the public, they show Milne (a married father -of-two) and Robinson (single, and best known as W ikiLeaks fugitive Julian Assange’s lawyer) locked together in a clammy embrace.

‘They were very hands-on, full-on heavy petting,’ said the photographer . ‘There was a lot of hugging, stroking, kissing and intimate talking going on. The photo with her head nestled into him — that was them mid-snog.’ THE

frisky duo are said to have shared pink cocktails (the house special is called Confessions on the Roof and includes ‘passion syrup’) before sloping off into the hotel, where rooms cost £300 a night.

What happened next is anyone’s guess. Robinson has yet to speak publicly, while Milne, challenged outside the £2million house he shares with Italian-born wife Cristina Montanari, 60, and their two children in Richmond, south-west London, said, ‘I don ’t think so,’ when asked for a comment.

Meanwhile ,‘ friends’ of the Marxistsym pathising former Guardian journalist have ungallantly claimed that he was ‘not a willing partici - pant’ in any sexual indiscretion.

‘I know the pictures tell a differ - ent story, but there is nothing going on,’ one told the Daily Telegraph. ‘I don’t think it’s a quick snog. There may have been a bit of nuzzling on her part. But if you look at Seumas’s face, you can see he’s not a willing participant.’

The so - called ‘friend’ did not explain why, if Milne was being forced into intimate relations against his will, several photos show him tenderly wrapping his arms around Robinson’s neck.

Nor has any explanation yet been forthcoming over the subsequent emergence of a second image showing Milne and Robinson socialising together outside normal working hours.

This time, they were dining at Ciao Bella, a dimly-lit Italian res - taurant in Bloomsbury, at 9.29pm on a Friday night in March.

In fact, the relationship between Robinson and Seamus Milne (nicknamed ‘Shameless’ by the satirical magazine Private Eye) has been the subject of feverish speculation in Labour circles for more than a year.

Indeed, it was thanks to such sources in that circle that the media were able to identify the Australian in the pictures. She had been a bridesmaid at actor George Clooney’s wedding to her fellow lawyer Amal Alamuddin in Venice.

‘We were working from a shortlist of three women whose inter - actions with Milne have sparked gossip,’ says one of them. ‘They’re all blonde. That ’s one reason it took 24 hours to identify her.’

So far, so grubby. Yet the shenanigans that occurred at the Court - house Hotel are not merely the subject of sexual intrigue. They also raise worrying political questions.

For, as P apua New Guinean campaigner Benny Wenda might attest, Milne’s relationship with Robinson was about business as well as pleasure.

Some might argue that recent times have seen Doughty Street Chambers, where the glamorous barrister plies her trade, become a sort of de facto legal extension of the Corbyn machine.

others might observe that, in return, Milne’s boss has become the Left-wing law chambers’ most prominent political supporter.

As an example of this mutually beneficial relationship, there was the High Court case last month, where Doughty Street Chambers successfully took the Government to court, persuading a judge to rule its ‘ benefit cap’ on lone parents with small children was unlawful.

The case, on which Robinson provided ‘support and assistance’, represented a notable victory for the Labour leader. Indeed, Corbyn smugly called it ‘ a further demonstration of the failure of the Conservatives’ austerity agenda’.

Completing the incestuous circle, Robinson then used her T witter feed to share Corbyn ’s comment with her 26,000 followers — a move her close friend Seumas Milne will have doubtless applauded. ANOTHER

example of this cosy nexus was an earlier High Court case when her chambers helped Corbyn see off an effort by centrist Labour activists to stop his name being on the ballot paper for the party leadership election.

Robinson, who had said it would be ‘a democratic and legal scandal’ if Corbyn was disqualified from the vote, again gleefully tweeted the result.

As so often, in the back-scratching world of politics, the relationship between Robinson’s legal chambers and Team Corbyn appears to run both ways. F or I can reveal that earlier this year , Milne hired a young woman called Georgina Robertson to join Labour’s communications team. The party apparently now pays her to work in ‘digital rebuttal’.

She just happens to be the twentysomething daughter of Geoffrey Robertson QC, founder of Doughty Street Chambers and a man Jennifer Robinson has often described as her ‘mentor’.

It’s all very comfy , although we must, of course, presume that Her Majesty’s opposition hands out jobs entirely on merit.

Meanwhile, Georgina Robertson, whose mother is the A ustralian writer and risque humourist Kathy Lette, previously worked as a volunteer at W ikiLeaks and her parents offered their home as a refuge for Assange. This was after WikiLeaks’ publication in 2010 of U.S. diplomatic cables which, in an age of mounting global terrorism, caused huge damage to W estern security agencies.

This brings us neatly onto what recent events tell us about rela - tions between T eam Corbyn and Julian Assange.

Milne (like his boss) is a long - standing supporter of the W ikiLeaks founder, who has spent more than five years fleeing from justice, holed- up at the Ecuadorean