No one should work after 68, says Jeremy. In his case, voters will agree

It was a poignant moment. At the Royal College of Nursing’s conference in Liverpool, a man in the audience had just asked Jeremy Corbyn whether he would lower the retirement age. “I’m now expected to work in this demanding job until I’m 68,” the man had complained.

Mr Corbyn smiled sympathetically. Labour, he promised, would “deal with” the problem, because he recognised the “stress levels” that older workers endured. “I think 68,” he said, “is too late.”

I hope any Labour Party members in the audience were paying attention.

Because it just so happens that next Friday is a very special day.

It’s Mr Corbyn’s 68th birthday. Yes, his 68th. At an age when other men are enjoying a well-earned retirement, poor Mr Corbyn is being forced by Labour Party members to toil miserably on.

Their behaviour is nothing short of callous. Do they feel no pity, when they see this beleaguered soul being mauled week after week at PMQS? Does it never occur to them that, at his time of life, he might be happier tending his allotment, or boiling raspberries for his home-made jams? What about his stress levels?

At least Labour MPS think of Mr Corbyn’s welfare. In the past 18 months they have done all they can to relieve him of his burden. There is nothing they want more than for Mr Corbyn to be released from his duties. Wistfully they picture him with his feet up at home, a mug of cocoa at his side, the latest issue of Steam Railway open on his lap, free at last from the trials of political leadership.

Yet their pleas for clemency have fallen on deaf ears. Last summer, Owen Smith kindly offered to replace Mr Corbyn. With supreme heartlessness, party members ordered Mr Corbyn to carry on. And it gets worse. Labour moderates now fear that members will make him carry on after the General Election – perhaps, even, carry on for as long as he lives.

“I think 68 is too late.” These slave-drivers should feel ashamed.

Mr Corbyn’s speech in Liverpool was different in tone to the one he gave last week in Manchester, when launching Labour’s campaign. In Manchester, he’d been angry, raging against “greedy bankers” and “profiteers”, and threatening the rich with “a reckoning”. Yesterday, though, he was more subdued, his voice a grey, low-level drone, like the sound of someone vacuuming in the next room.

He made numerous promises: to reintroduce bursaries for student nurses, to appoint a minister for mental health, to end the public sector pay cap, to give the NHS an extra £7.4billion a year. Naturally, his audience of NHS nurses appeared to like these ideas. Other voters may well like them, too. Unfortunately for Labour, however, polling suggests that even when voters do like their ideas, they still don’t want Mr Corbyn to be PM. Perhaps they too think he should be allowed to enjoy a well-earned retirement.