09:54

Slightly chaotic scenes this morning near Waterloo in south London, as Labour’s launch of a campaign poster was overtaken by questioning over why Jeremy Corbyn, who had been due to unveil it, was not there.

In the wake of last night’s leak of the Labour manifesto we instead had the party’s campaign coordinators, Andrew Gwynne and Ian Lavery, in front of the truck-mounted poster showing the slogan, “The Tories have held back Britain long enough.”

Lavery gave a brief speech castigating the Conservative record on areas including the NHS, housing and pensions. The government was “holding millions of people back and in cannot continue to be the case”, he said.

We’re seeing huge cuts in terms of austerity and ordinary people are suffering greatly, whilst those at the top are receiving huge tax cuts. And it just simply can’t be right. We, as a Labour party, will put that right.

But as he stopped, there came repeated shouts of, “What’s happened to Mr Corbyn?” led by Channel 4 News’s Michael Crick.

“Mr Corbyn is doing preparation the work for a very important meeting,” Lavery told the media surrounding him, as Gwynne tried to gently pull him towards their nearby car.

Lavery said he was actually pleased about the leak of the manifesto, as it got the “visionary” policies some extra attention.

He was meant to be here but things happen, and Mr Corbyn is dealing with internal matters within the party, and he’s dealing with preparation work. But listen, what is fantastic is the manifesto - really, really exciting, really visionary. They’ve done us a real favour, from what I’ve seen this morning. Lots of people are terribly excited about seeing it. It’s absolutely fantastic - visionary policies for a new Britain.