Going to Bristol three days before an election was a risk.
The city is steeped in political history – stretching back, ooh, at least as far as that time David Cameron popped in for a Nando’s.
But Jeremy Corbyn must have had one question rattling round his head as he approached Bristol today – what if Brenda shows up?
Security were doubtless told to be on on the lookout for telegenic pensioners, from whom a melodic declaration of election exasperation could knock a campaign off course quicker than a double-stuffed bacon sandwich.
But bless her heart, Brenda, the patron saint of cancelled annual leave, stayed away.
The grassroots gathering lacked some of the crackle of 2017-vintage Jeremy Corbyn rallies.
A solid 2,000 people showed up in the centre of Bristol to see the Labour leader speak.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
There were banners branding Boris Johnson a dictator. Upbeat soul classics wafted over the green, punctuated by the occasional round of “Oh Jeremy Corbyn”.
But a really good Corbyn rally can be as close as British politics gets to Radiohead on the Main Stage in ’97.
This was closer to Oasis pumping out the hits with Ringo Starr’s son on drums in 2004. Not bad in any objective sense of the word, just lacking in…magic.
A lot of this can probably be put down to it being 8 degrees – still quite warm for December, but far from the balmy early evenings of 2017’s summer campaign.
(Image: PA)
Still, Jeremy arriving on stage a full 40 minutes later than advertised tested the crowd’s patience.
One fairweather fan was overheard declaring: “I’m going to give him five more minutes, then I’m going to do a bit of yoga.
“If he doesn’t have the decency to show up on time, f*** him”
And long after that guy has given up and namaste’d away, a plaintive cry of “Come on, mate. We’re going to the pub” rang out from the crowd.
Still, Thangham Debbonaire did her best to vamp.
(Image: Getty Images)
And when Corbyn finally arrived, he was greeted with an enormous cheer, a weary smile on his face and a copy of the Mirror tucked under his arm. More of that later.
The speech was the same speech he’s given on the stump for at least four years. Probably longer.
The format is generally a shuffled list of the worthy aims and principles behind his campaign, tied together with the refrain “and it’s also about.”
It’s about the Tories letting a few get sickeningly rich, but doing little to prevent hundreds of thousands getting unspeakably poor.
And it’s also about children waking up on Christmas morning not knowing where they’re going to see in the new year.
And it’s also about education. And it’s also about mental health services – which raised one of the bigger cheers of the afternoon.
And in the most recent revision of the Corbyn Creed, it’s now also about free broadband.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
But the big moment came when the Labour Leader raised aloft a copy of today’s Daily Mirror – bearing the horrific image of a child in Spider-Man pyjamas, huddled for warmth under a coat on the floor of an NHS hospital, a breathing bag hung next to his face.
While the worst Jeremy Corbyn had to contend with was a shortage of Glasto magic – far away the wings were falling off Boris Johnson’s campaign.
Johnson responded to being shown a picture of the aforementioned sick child being let down by his government by snatching a reporter’s phone and stuffing it in his coat pocket.
The Tory leader compounded this terrible, terrible look by apparently deciding to make a 90 mile journey by private jet rather than car like a normal person.
Then he cancelled his third campaign stop in as many days because there might have been some people there who found his oversexed, middle-aged, Dennis-the-Menace-with-the-nuclear-codes schtick neither amusing nor charming.
Until today, Tory strategy had been to avoid actually doing or saying anything that could turn into a “nothing has changed”-scale disaster.
And with postal votes already in, maybe it’s too late to make a difference.
But Corbyn’s team will be happy to have spent the day watching their guy flatly pumping out the hits to a steady beat – rather than having to clean up after a slowly disintegrating Prime Minister repeatedly slipping on his own banana skins.
