Bill Clinton branded Jeremy Corbyn 'maddest person in the room', leaked speech reveals

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Bill Clinton branded Labour’s Jeremy Corbyn the "maddest person in the room" in a speech he gave explaining the resurgence of left-wing politics in Europe and America.

Documents released by Wikileaks show the former President joked that when Mr Corbyn won his leadership contest, it appeared Labour had just "got a guy off the street" to run the party.

He compared Mr Corbyn’s rise to the success of Alexis Tsipras in Greece and Bernie Sanders in US primaries.

In one section of the speech, Mr Clinton said Labour had disposed of one potentially successful leader, David Miliband, because they were "mad at him for being part of Tony Blair’s government in the Iraq War".

He went on: "They moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labor movement wanted it.

"When David Cameron thumped him in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadn’t moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labor Party [sic]."

Mr Clinton added: "But what that is reflective of – the same thing happened in the Greek election – when people feel they’ve been shafted and they don’t expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them."

Labour declined to comment on the speech.