Dear Leader delivered a defiant message to the eight cockroaches

ATENCIÓN! Atención! Raise your fists. Hoist the red flag. Strike up the revolutionary trumpets of La Bayamesa, Cuba’s national anthem. Our Dear Leader wishes to address a grateful nation.

Jeremy Corbyn has finally responded to the outbreak of treachery from within his great party.

And where could a grateful nation see this urgent national broadcast? Via a home video posted on Twitter, of course.

Not for Mr Corbyn the mainstream media, where he might be tripped up by a rigorous television interviewer.

Of course, there were no Castro- style bullet-belts draped across his spindly frame, no victory cheroot clasped menacingly between his molars. Nor was there any crackling of celebratory Kalashnikov fire in the background.

Not yet, anyway. These are but early days in the Corbynista rev- olution, comrades.

Head skewed to one side, Jezza’s message was defiant. His tone mildly sinister. The eight cockroaches who deserted the Labour Party, he said, had done so simply to ‘sit with disaffected Tory MPs’.

This was a bizarre interpretation. Surely, burly Mike Gapes (Ilford South) hadn’t given up the party to which he’d dedicated his life since 1968 to become colleagues with Tory defector Heidi Allen (South Cambridgeshire), whose corporate career has included working for ExxonMobil?

For months, Mr Corbyn was accused of hiding from allegations of anti-Semitism.

But yesterday, the Dear Leader insisted that Labour are the Jewish people’s ‘ biggest allies’. Fighting anti-Semitism is his ‘top priority’.

This reminded me of that eerie final scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when, having been rescued by Indiana Jones, the Ark of the Covenant is handed to shady government agents. ‘Top men’ would investigate it, they say, only for the audience to see it being buried away in the archives.

There was some other flim-flam about rebalancing society and rebuilding public services, delivering the Labour government people need, etc.

Otherwise, this was just 101 seconds of denial and delusion. Certainly not a contender for a Short Film (Live Action) award in Sunday’s Oscars. Compare and contrast – as exam papers at my school commanded – Mr Corbyn’s reaction to his defecting MPs with Theresa May’s genuinely sorrowful sounding remarks about the three Tory resignations.

And so off Mr Corbyn tootled to Brussels for talks with the EU’s urbane Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier. He was accompanied by podgy Action Man doll Sir Keir Starmer MP (Holborn and St Pancras), the shadow Brexit secretary.

Alongside them was shadow attorney general Lady Chakrabarti, in funereal black. Grief- stricken and Bambi-eyed, she looked sadder than Karl Lagerfeld’s poor orphaned cat Choupette.

WHAT she might have been mourning wasn’t clear – neither was what all three were doing in the capital of the EU, which Mr Corbyn once described as ‘totally unaccountable to anybody’.

As far as I’m aware, the Opposition has no negotiatory powers. Regardless, Mr Corbyn said his ‘talks’ had been ‘useful and informative’.

Mr C, Sir K and Lady C seemed jolly flattered by all the attention. There were even unctuous words for the EU Parliament’s creepy-looking Brexit negotiator, Guy Verhofstadt. ‘We have a very constructive relationship,’ said Mr Corbyn meaninglessly.

I wonder how many times they’ve actually met?

And with that, this peculiar trio turned and began their short journey across the Channel. Talk about useful idiots.