Bill Clinton disparagingly referred to Jeremy Corbyn as being selected for Labour leader because he was “the maddest person in the room”, according to a leaked transcript of a campaign speech he made last year.

The former US president spoke mockingly of Labour responding to its 2015 general election defeat by moving further to the left and having “practically got a guy off the street to be the leader” in the shape of Corbyn.

Clinton was speaking at a presidential fundraiser for his wife, Hillary, in Maryland in October last year, according to the transcript of his remarks, leaked by WikiLeaks as part of the group’s release of a wider cache of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign director, John Podesta.

This was the period when Hillary Clinton was battling Bernie Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination, a subject that led Bill Clinton to discuss the changes in the Labour party at the time.



Clinton told his audience that Sanders’ response to economic questions was “just go get the money from the millionaires”, according to the leaked transcript.

Such a view “sounds good” to a lot of people around the world, Clinton argued. “The British Labour party disposed of its most [inaudible] leader, David Miliband, because they were mad at him for being part of Tony Blair’s government in the Iraq war,” Clinton said.

“And they moved to the left and put his brother in as leader because the British labour 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 Labour party.”

Clinton continued: “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.”

While he does not make it explicit, it seems Clinton is likely to be using “maddest” in the US context of “angriest”.



Such a political reaction was “perfectly psychologically understandable and predictable”, Clinton argued in the speech, delivered at the home of a local real estate developer and his wife.

“Most people in America haven’t had a raise in 15 years,” he said. “Eight-six per cent of the American people, adjusted for inflation, have an income today lower than it was the day before the crash. The median income of American families, adjusted for inflation, is lower than it was the day I left office.”

The rest of the speech made no mention of UK politics, instead covering a range of areas including the US economy, gun control and the rise of Islamic State, and talking up Hillary Clinton’s qualifications to be president.

A spokesman for Corbyn said he had no response to Clinton’s remarks.

