Corbyn ‘sabotaged his own election campaign’
Aides: He was always late and had tantrum over bus
Jeremy Corbyn appeared to be trying to sabotage his own election campaign last year, according to his aides.
A new book reveals that the former Labour leader’s team feared he wanted to lose in protest at being excluded from key decisions.
A leaked transcript of their WhatsApp group reveals he was repeatedly accused of cancelling events and being deliberately late, prompting concerns he was having a breakdown.
He even allegedly threw a tantrum when he heard that the Liberal Democrats had an electricpowered battle bus while his ran on diesel. The book also details how aides had to ask ITV not to use footage of mr Corbyn’s wife, Laura Alvarez, interrupting a live
‘An oatcake for his wife’
shot of him to demand he prepare her an oatcake.
Hundreds of leaked emails and private messages between senior aides show mr Corbyn was reduced to spending vital hours of the campaign bickering over his right to see his schedule.
He was said to be furious that he was sent to Liverpool to launch the battle bus and demanded a grid of events a week in advance.
According to the book – Left Out: The Inside Story of Labour Under Corbyn by Gabriel Pogrund and Patrick maguire – he complained: ‘I am fully entitled to be consulted before these decisions are made.’ The same day he said advice on going to the event ‘was never given to me at any time’. The following day, he wrote: ‘I need to see the whole grid not just parts of it. Can you send it now?’
One of his aides said: ‘It was like he’d had a breakdown. He just wouldn’t drop the stuff about the diary ... It was his way of trying to regain control.’
The book recounts: ‘With less than three weeks to go and Labour ten points behind the Tories in most polls, some aides had arrived at the extraordinary conclusion that Corbyn was sabotaging his own campaign.’
One official said of a visit to Stoke-on-Trent: ‘JC was deliberately adding extra things and talking to people to delay and then spoke for 30 mins plus at the campaign stop once they had arrived 40 mins late.’
December’s election resulted in Labour’s worst defeat in 84 years.
The book also reveals that mr Corbyn and his wife formed an unlikely bond with Prince Harry and meghan, giving the Duchess of Sussex a book about a 17thcentury mexican feminist nun who had been maligned by the establishment. Despite denials at the time, it also reveals that at the height of the Brexit drama, the leader was so exhausted that aides gave him a duvet so he could take a nap in his office, and he ‘slept like a baby’.
There were also reports that Tom Watson contemplated standing for the Lib Dems in Lewes, east Sussex, after quitting as deputy leader.
In another development, mr Corbyn’s gatekeeper Karie murphy made her first public comments to distance herself from the election campaign, declaring it wrong to say she was in charge of strategy.