Jezza played role of gnarly gumshoe Lootenant Columbo
Westminster blogger Guido Fawkes says they’ve been publicly available on the web for some time.)
Corbyn claimed these documents were irrefutable proof the Tories are prepared to negotiate away the future of the NHS in post-Brexit trade talks with the
Trump government. That included drugpricing, access to the UK market, the whole works.
Jezza played the role of gnarly gumshoe, Lootenant Columbo of US TV fame. ‘I’ll leave you journalists to comb through it,’ he said, giving a satisfied smirk. A group of NHS doctors in surgical scrubs then handed the documents around for reporters to inspect.
Questions followed. Naturally, everyone wanted to discuss anti-Semitism – causing Barry Gardiner to flip his lid.
Had he and Corbyn really expected us to sift through 451 pages of this supposedly bombshell document in double quick time and ask detailed questions on it?
OF the questions which did relate to the NHS talks, the heavy-lifting was done by Gardiner, possibly because his boss didn’t understand much of it. In any case, by now, Corbyn had largely zoned out.
At one point, as Barry droned on, Corbyn pawed admiringly at that velvet pouch he had carried the documents in, weighing it up, perhaps, as a potential Christmas prezzie for his wife.
More importantly, who had supplied the leaked documents? A Watergatestyle Deep Throat informant?
Again, such info was presumably highly classified.
If these documents really were the election game-changer that Corbyn billed them as, he certainly had a funny way of showing it.
He seemed bored and distracted, often bouncing his ballpoint up and down on the table for amusement.
I’m no Bob Woodward but the whole business reeked of what the Tories’ Aussie election guru Sir Lynton Crosby calls the political ‘dead cat’ device.
A hyped-up decoy, in other words, to distract from Corbyn’s disastrous Tuesday night mauling by Andrew Neil.
If so, that’s an awful waste of paper, though at least it’ll make handy firelighter material as the winter weather sets in.