I almost feel sorry for past-his-prime Corbyn

The electrifying election result in December instantly cancelled out Corbynite Labour. A man who had no business leading a major political party in the United Kingdom finally became one hundred per cent irrelevant. Bye-bye, Corbs!

Except… he didn’t go. He still hasn’t gone, instead remaining in post until a new leader has been appointed. Does it really matter if he’s here or there; gone or not gone? After all, Labour isn’t changing in any remotely interesting way, and the leadership battle is also cloaked in a sense of futility: none of them come close to what the party needs bar, at a pinch, Lisa Nandy.

And yet, last week, I almost began to feel sorry for Corbyn. Once the mighty leader, the would-be PM, the grand vizier around whom all those Facebook communities spewing antiSemitic bile rallied – who is he now?

The answer: a rather sadlooking, poorly dressed man. This, at any rate, was the impression

I took from my sighting of him. Meeting a chum who works at Westminster, we were walking through the foyer of Portcullis House when who was behind us? Signor Jeremy himself.

He was dressed in ill-fitting trousers, but the most poignant detail was the weary-looking underling trudging along beside him, dragging a flattened cardboard box.

On they went, stopping to chat to an attendant at the escalators. Down the escalators they went – I glanced back and saw a car appear, into which Jeremy’s underling seemed to be forlornly trying to fit said box.

Quite why the leader of the Opposition was traipsing through Portcullis House with an aide dragging a flattened box wasn’t obvious – perhaps it is for a specially virtuous kind of recycling, or to be ground into a vegan stew. Perhaps in advance of having to clear out his office. Whatever it was: this was a very much a man past his prime.