Sketch: Corbyn’s speech proved he is as cunning as Blair

He looked bored. He looked dishevelled. His half-knotted crimson tie sagged disconsolately beneath his bearded throat. The drab jacket seemed as beige as ever. Corbyn spoke to the Labour conference looking like an embarrassed scout-master thanking his colleagues for a surprise party he didn’t want.

‘Any chance we could start the speech?’ he asked as the crowed clapped and cheered him.

He began in ever-so-humble mode by saying how grateful he was ‘to be invited’ to address the conference. And he warmly thanked the three rival candidates he had trounced in the leadership election. He sounded as if they’d trounced him.

The hesitant, informal style is so effective it looks almost calculated. Maybe it is. This was a shrewdly orchestrated speech and it began with a few merry swipes at the media. One newspaper had called his two-wheeler a ‘Chairman Mao bicycle.’ Another accused him of welcoming a meteor strike that would wipe out humanity.