Commons Confidential: Hilary’s last laugh

Benn was born into and loves the Labour Party. His was a cry of frustration. Either he enjoys the last laugh or the lachrymose coup fails.

By Kevin Maguire

Observing a careworn Jeremy Corbyn, you may see in his lined face his sadness about his neglected allotment in Finchley, north London, as he imagines weeds sprouting in untilled beds and aphids multiplying, untroubled by organic pesticides. If you do, you would be wrong. Corbyn is keeping his fingers green even as militant moderates plot to snatch the Labour leadership from his weakening grasp and consign Jexit to the compost heap of history.

Broad beans are this year’s bumper crop and already on the table chez Corbyn. “I planted them in October and they’re very resistant to frost,” he proudly tells visitors. “There must be ten to 20 bags’ worth left to pick.” Either Corbyn is in denial, or he was full of beans as the shadow cabinet uprooted itself.

Cider, wellies and silent discos will henceforth always evoke resignations for Tom Watson. Labour’s deputy leader was throwing shapes at Glastonbury as the Labour balloon went up. Think of Peter Mannion standing on a children’s slide for a mobile-phone signal at Stewart Pearson’s Thought Camp in The Thick of It. Watson was scheduled to replace Corbyn in the Left Field chatterati tent.

Dodging paparazzi to head back to London in his shorts, Watson confided to comrades that this episode confirmed to him that politics is a grubby business. His first act was to shower, following a weekend without washing, before trying to clear up the Labour Party’s mess.

The mass walkout from Corbyn’s top team, triggered by Hilary Benn’s sacking, was revenge for the now former shadow foreign secretary. I can reveal that Benn was reduced to tears during last year’s long reshuffle, after Jezza’s apparatchik Seumas Milne demanded guaranteed opposition to military action in Libya. Benn was born into and loves the Labour Party. His was a cry of frustration. Either he enjoys the last laugh or the lachrymose coup fails.

More tales of the wannabe prime minister Boris Johnson’s unappetising behaviour in TV make-up rooms. An artist with the blusher complained that he grabbed, uninvited, one of two cakes that she had been given as a birthday gift. He stuffed it whole into his mouth. When she finished applying the cosmetics, he snaffled the second. The Blond Ambition displayed a similar self-entitlement in championing Brexit to pursue his premiership dream.

For weirdos, every tragedy is an opportunity. Following the assassination of Jo Cox, another female Yorkshire MP received an official-looking letter purportedly from a “security consultant”, with parliamentary and Special Branch clearance, offering to review her safety. A little alarm bell sounded. He was unmasked as a Walter Mitty. The visit of two burly coppers caused him an involuntary bowel movement.