Why did Corbyn and his wife defy lockdown rules?
‘I WOULD urge them to stay away,’ Sir Lindsay Hoyle told reconvening MPs last week. ‘There is no benefit to being here physically.’
The Commons Speaker said those members aged over 70 should ‘pay particular attention to the advice of Public Health England’, and ‘strongly advised’ them not to mingle with others. Ever one to defy common sense, Jeremy Corbyn, 71 next month, not only shunned all lockdown etiquette to turn up in Westminster but brought with him his third wife.
Best known as an importer of Fairtrade coffee, Laura Alvarez i s neither an aide nor a key worker. Yet there she was, contrary to essential travel rules, flanking her husband on Wednesday in a thankfully otherwise deserted Parliament.
Labour MPs are particularly annoyed with their former leader for refusing to isolate, especially since he spluttered t his way through his valedictory address to the Parliamentary Labour Party group of MPs recently. The meeting took place via video conferencing app Zoom, with Corbyn’s ‘hacking cough’ a constant interruption, according to one source.
‘ I haven’t got coronavirus,’ a struggling Corbyn insisted after succumbing to a nasty bout of wheezing. It was just ‘a dry biscuit’, he claimed unconvincingly, before seeming to knock over his webcam as he forcefully rasped. And as a recording of this swansong kindly passed to me shows, the pensioner even donned a pair of protective gloves as his throat continued to rattle. He clearly knows how to use Zoom, so why flout guidance and turn up at the Commons?