At first glance, it appears an everyday story of an older man falling for a younger, pretty blonde woman.

The photographic evidence certainly seems to suggest Seumas Milne, the 59-year-old Labour Party spin doctor, enjoying an intimate romantic clinch with a 36-year-old lawyer who is not his wife.

Not so, said friends of Mr Milne. Perhaps somewhat ungallantly, they insisted Mr Milne was “not a willing participant” in the encounter.

Mr Milne, Jeremy Corbyn’s director of communications, had not relished a moment of his embrace with Jennifer Robinson, a human rights lawyer, on the balcony of a hotel in east London.

Jennifer Robinson, lawyer for Julian Assange credit: Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images Europe

“I know the pictures tell a different story,” said a source close to the events, “But I know there is nothing going on. I don’t think it’s a quick snog. There may have been a bit of nuzzling on her part but if you look at Seumas’s face, you can see he is not a willing participant.”

Such news will be welcome relief to Cristina Montanari, Mr Milne’s wife of the past quarter of a century. The couple, who live in a £2 million house in west London, have two grown up children.

Ms Montanari, 60, was a former director of an advertising company who now, according to one website, works as a private tutor. Mr Milne is a former Guardian columnist, Marxist sympathiser and son of the former BBC director general Alasdair Milne. He was educated at Winchester College.

Jennifer Robinson credit: AFP

His not romantically attached new friend is an Australian lawyer now practising as a barrister at Doughty Street chambers, where she is close friends of Amal Clooney, the wife of the Hollywood actor George Clooney.

Miss Robinson has represented Julian Assange, the Wikileaks founder who remains holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy in London. Mr Milne has also met Assange inside the embassy raising suggestions that could be how the pair first met.

The photograph of them in a state of embrace was taken at the Courthouse Hotel in Shoreditch in a fashionable part of London. “They were very heavy hands on, full on heavy petting,” a witness told the Guido Fawkes political website. He was clearly mistaken.

Seumas Milne

Miss Robinson’s father jumped to her rescue. Terry Robinson, a horse trainer from New South Wales, dismissed suggestions she is having an affair with the married father-of-two.

He said: “I know my daughter pretty well. She’s probably just having a night out and I think it’s more like a friendship than anything else. Especially if she’s had a few drinks.”

He added: “I think it’s just a storm in a teacup.”

Miss Robinson, a Rhodes scholar who studied at Balliol College, Oxford, has regularly tweeted her praise of Mr Corbyn.

On Tuesday, neither Mr Milne nor Miss Robinson were prepared to comment on the photographs. Mr Milne has previously been pictured shaking hands with Vladimir Putin, the Russian president. It is not clear which of the two photographs - that with Mr Putin or with Miss Robinson - will prove the more embarrassing.