The next challenge: how to master the conference autocue

AFTER battling through a difficult first two weeks in charge of his party, Jeremy Corbyn is facing up to a new challenge – how to handle an autocue.

Just days before his first party conference speech as Labour leader, Mr Corbyn has admitted he is only now learning to use the device, which will allow him to read from a screen and keep eye contact with his audience for longer.

At last week’s TUC conference, Mr Corbyn read a speech haltingly from a sheaf of papers. He was criticised after he forgot to include a veiled criticism of Margaret Thatcher, the former Conservative prime minister.

The Labour leader admitted last night that he had “never used an auto- cue in my life before”. He told ITV News: “I have done a lot of public meetings in my life.

“A speech to the Labour party conference is slightly different because at one level you’re appealing to your own party and trying to give a message and direction to your own party and at the other you’re trying to deal with political debate and appeal to a wider national and international audience.”

Lord Mandelson has claimed in choosing Mr Corbyn instead of Ed Miliband, “the general public now feel we are just putting two fingers up to them, exchanging one loser for an even worse one”. The former adviser to Tony Blair issued his views in a private paper circulated to political associates last week where he says that Labour will not be elected under its current leader.