Updated at 4pm
GOD KNOWS, THERE’S enough happening in Irish politics right now – staying on top of the minutiae of events in Westminster isn’t top of many people’s priority list.
Sure the election’s long over, Cameron’s back in Number 10 and they won’t be casting another ballot in anger until 2020.
In the meantime, the months-long Labour leadership battle is dominating the headlines across the water. And until the last few weeks, it’s been pretty run-of-the-mill stuff.
That’s until one (very) left-of-centre candidate took the lead – throwing his competitors into disarray, and setting the tone of the debate.
Leftwinger Jeremy Corbyn took a 20-point lead over his rivals in a poll published this week, pushing Andy Burnham, the shadow health secretary, into third place. Yvette Cooper – the shadow home secretary (and wife of Ed Balls) – is in second in the latest poll (22.6%).
Corbyn – a former union official – has said he would scrap the UK’s nuclear missile system and increase taxes on the wealthy, however scrapping the royal family is a battle he’s ‘not fighting’ during this leadership contest.
As a politician, he’s built a reputation as a straight-talker. Outside politics – he doesn’t own a car, enjoys making jam with fruit from his allotment and, according to the Financial Times, is a “borderline trainspotter”.
No stranger to controversy, this video of a Channel 4 interview in which he was challenged for referring to members of Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends” has gone near viral. An irascible Corbyn insists “let me finish” several times, as host Krishnan Guru-Murthy grills him on his use of language…
To find out more about Corbyn and the other contenders in the race to replace Ed Miliband, it’s worth checking out these recently-posted profiles from the BBC. Our columnist Aaron McKenna also had some interesting observations to make about the left-winger’s policies in this piece at the weekend.
If you don’t have time for all that this morning, however - @corbynjokes will give you a flavour of the debate, along with (hopefully) a few laughs.
End-of-pier set-ups, followed by straight-laced hard-left ‘punchlines’.
Doesn’t sound like a recipe for humour… But then the whole campaign so far’s been a little unusual.
You could, of course, also follow the real Jeremy Corbyn.
But his account’s nowhere near as much fun…
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