On Thursday I attended a lunch with the Environment Secretary Steve Reed.
Addressing the political journalists gathered inside Parliament’s ‘Churchill Room’, Reed devoted much of his speech to lambasting Jeremy Corbyn, and the “hard left”, who he accused of having “an inexplicable penchant for Vladimir Putin”.
Now, whatever your views of Corbyn, to say that he had a “penchant for Putin” is false.
Because while Corbyn was not a fan of NATO, he was also a long-term critic of Putin, who condemned former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair’s alliance with him, and attracted ridicule and condemnation for calling out Conservative funding by Russian oligarchs.
Yet at the same time as the Environment Secretary was launching an attack on his long-since departed leader, Reed’s own boss Keir Starmer was busy prostrating himself before someone with an actual and longstanding “penchant for Putin” - Donald Trump.