Tory plans to meticulously comb through Corbyn’s controversial past were very nearly scuppered by financial cuts. When the opposition research team went to dig out what was in the files there was nothing to be found, despite searching high and low. That was until a grey-haired Tory recalled that CCHQ’s files on the ageing socialist – compiled under cold war warrior Julian Lewis’s aegis when he was in charge of the Conservative Research Department – were in the archive vaults of the Bodleian Library at Oxford University. It turns out that long ago the then Tory chairman Archie “Asda” Norman did a cost-cutting study which concluded that the Tory research archives were a waste of space. He wanted the files burnt to save space and money. Fortunately for the Tories wiser heads prevailed and a deal was negotiated to put the files into Conservative Party Archive at the Bodleian.

The files have now been extracted from the Bodleian. In addition all the newspaper clippings from the “Haringey Years” when he was a local councillor, while London’s Loony Labour Left were at their looniest, have also been dug out. Watch out for those old stories being judiciously recycled…