HE’S JUST A PREENING NARCISSIST WITHOUT HONOUR ...
says ousted MP who confronted him as he took selfies in Commons
‘A hairdryer moment’
A DeFeATeD Labour mP accused Jeremy Corbyn of betraying the working class yesterday as she gave him a 20-minute public tirade.
mary Creagh, the former mP for Wakefield, said she had given the Labour leader the ‘hairdryer treatment’ after she saw him at Westminster while clearing out her Commons office.
Still furious, she later blasted him on Channel 4 News, describing him as a ‘preening narcissist’.
miss Creagh had earlier spotted mr Corbyn taking selfies with a group of young people in a public area of the building. ‘I told him he shouldn’t be having his photo with young people because he had betrayed their future,’ she said. ‘I asked him to apologise for what he’d done.’
The former mP, who saw her 2,000 majority overturned to lose Wakefield by more than 3,000 votes, said she told mr Corbyn he had run a disastrous and chaotic election campaign, overseen a ‘joke’ manifesto and alienated Labour’s natural supporters.
She demanded that he step down immediately, saying it was wrong for him to stay in his job while she had been forced to make her Commons staff redundant.
‘I told him it was his sole decision to call the election without even consulting the Shadow Cabinet and as a result of that decision he has delivered the hardest possible Brexit,’ she said.
‘I told him to come to Wakefield to apologise for five more years of Tory austerity and five years of a Tory mP. It was a hairdryer moment.’ miss Creagh – who served in ed miliband’s Shadow Cabinet – said Labour’s election campaign had been run by ‘ideologues’ and revealed that she had been facing attempts to remove her as a candidate on the day the election was called.
She said the party had concentrated on fighting for seats held by Tories while leaving sitting Labour mPs without support.
‘His momentum activists were being sent to places like Stevenage and Scarborough where the Tories had big majorities while good Labour mPs were struggling to get activists,’ she said.
‘He kept on falling back saying the media narrative was against him. I told him that was nonsense and that other leaders faced the same thing but with him it stuck because voters saw how he treated his own party.
‘I said he needs to hear what people are saying about him,’ miss Creagh said.
‘He needs to know what he has done. He needs to own his failure. He must apologise for what he has done. I told him “why are you still sat in your office when all my staff have just lost their
Jeremy needs to know what he has done. He needs to own his own failure ... He must go now
Mary Creagh yesterday
jobs?”. I told him that he shouldn’t stay as leader another day. He must go now.’
Miss Creagh later told Channel 4 News that the Labour leader was a ‘preening narcissist’.
She said: ‘Jeremy’s manifesto, Jeremy’s the leader, Jeremy’s NEC, Jeremy’s plan called at Jeremy’s time and I can tell you on the doorsteps of Wakefield they had two words, and I can’t say them prewatershed, about what they thought of that strategy.’
‘I’ve had no phone calls or messages from anyone, Jeremy or his team, which given I was in today telling my staff that they are going to be redundant a week before Christmas I think shows that we have in Jeremy a man without honour and without shame – and a type of preening narcissism that means he thinks he’s still got something left to offer the Labour movement and Labour voters who deserted us in their millions at this election.’