Corbyn chief’s Caribbean dispatch

During their four years running the Labour party, most of the protagonists in the Corbyn project became well-known faces to the British public. There was the hapless Richard Burgon and the sinister John McDonnell; the flailing Diane Abbott and the unctuous Barry Gardiner. Even backroom boys like the gum-chewing spin doctor Seumas Milne briefly became minor celebrities, thanks to celebrated cameos in appearances like the 2016 Vice documentary.

But one figure who remained largely unknown to the world outside Westminster was Corbyn’s spokesman James Schneider, the co-founder of Momentum. Schneider spent three and a half thankless years at the Corbynista coalface, being sent out to face the media firing squad at daily lobby briefings. It was Schneider who, with a straight face, had to defend claims about the septuagenarian socialist – such as the one in which Corbyn was doing multiple seven kilometre runs a week to prepare for office.