Former US President Bill Clinton and the husband of Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, called Jeremy Corbyn the maddest person in the room and a guy the Labour Party just got off the street in a speech published by Wikileaks.
Clinton, who was the US president from 1993-2001, made the comments in a private fund-raising speech. The document was part of a series known as the Podesta emails after John Podesta, Hillary Clintons campaign manager.
Wikileaks chose to release the documents as Hillary Clinton entered the final stages of her bid to become the first female president in the nations history. Wikileaks had threatened to release a whopper email during the election.
Clintons spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, even posted a pre-emptive tweet, saying: Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a Wikileaks in next two days – its probably a fake. However it seems unlikely that the ridiculing of the Labour Party would be described as a whopper – even in the UK.
According to Wikileaks, Clintons speech took place in Potomac, Maryland on 19 October 2015. Clinton said: When David Cameron thumped [Ed Miliband] in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadnt moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labour Party.
He added: When people feel theyve been shafted and they dont expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them.
Clinton has long been seen as something of an electoral liability for his wife, who has had to defend him from rumours about his womanising habits when attacking Trump for his own sexist views. However, as Americans go to the polls the early indications are that the Democratic nominees relative popularity with women voters may help see her elected to office.
