A pro-Jeremy Corbyn campaign group last night launched a social media campaign to celebrate the anniversary of the Labour leader’s historic election.
The ‘Jeremy Corbyn for PM’ group asked users to submit their favourite moments of his first 12 months in office.
But the stunt backfired when it was hijacked by those less than impressed by Corbyn’s tenure.
Replies came in picking on Labour suffering the second largest deficit of any opposition party in the history of opinion polling, others targeting his perceived support for the Irish Republican Army.
One person tackled his recent defence of appearing on Iranian state broadcaster Press TV, in which he described payments of up to £20,000 as “not an enormous amount”.
While the time he said those highlighting the anti-Semitism crisis in Labour were out to undermine his leadership because they were “nervous of the strength of the Labour party at local level” was also one person’s helpful contribution.
Another said their highlight was Corbyn saying the day after the EU referendum vote that “Article 50 must be invoked now”, before denying he ever called for an immediate Brexit.
Others took a more comical view of the campaign, making jokes about Corbyn’s anger at the media not covering a parish council by-election win, the large crowds he draws to campaign rallies, and his reading out an autocue prompt “insert strong message here” at the Labour conference last year.
While the famous parody account of pro-Corbyn pressure group ‘Momentum’, a local branch of the campaign in leafy Surbiton, pointed to the time when they were reported to Twitter.
The Spectator’s Alex Massie took the opportunity to use a line borrowed from Corbyn’s director of communications, Seumas Milne, to voice concern about the Corbyn campaign group’s stunt.
There were also positive replies to the plea, however. The JC4PM campaign group, an unofficial team not directly linked to the Labour leader, posted some users’ submissions.