THE CORBYN ULTIMATUM

Starring:

Matt Daemon as Corbyn Hazard

Ezra Pound as John McDonnell

Angela Eagle as Angela Merkel

ONCE AGAIN, NOW THAT THE LAZY, hazy days of summer are upon us, I am able to do more than merely comment upon issues of pressing national importance and reprise my occasional role as a film critic. 

THE RECENT RELEASE of a new British Film Institute movie, at a time when many British films are pooh-poohed by the international criticism, is an event in itself, but when it is one that aims to "out-Bond Bond", as it says here somewhere in the papers that the children working for the Labour Party left under my door this morning, it can only be seen as blockbuster material.

NOT, OF COURSE, IN THE SENSE of "straight to video", which often is perceived in the term 'Blockbuster', but meaning that it will run and run and run. Not, of course, in the sense that it will try to evade or avoid criticism by running away; rather it will take it on the chin.

THE PLOT: CORBYN HAS MANAGED to escape from Moscow, although he still has flashes of memory from his time when he was an agent for Operation Work the Treadmill. In London he starts his operation to take over the world. He manages to make contact with a mysterious "McDonnell", who promises security service support to help him do so. He gets him a ticket to go to Camden, in order to get a ticket to Hackney, and then to Cockfosters, after which he will come back to Islington before going to Lewisham, Barking, Sky News Studios, and then perhaps New Malden, before coming back to Islington again and then going to Hammersmith and then Barking again, then Ealing, or perhaps Elephant and Castle, and then, in a touching, unexpected final sequence, on to a snow-ridden Southend-on-Sea. He then gets a phone call from a member of his shadow cabinet, which he refuses to answer.

THE FINAL DRAMATIC SCENE, where we see the phone dangling in an old-fashioned "phone box" on the Essex coast, surrounded by snow, with Corbyn wandering off towards a crowd of admirers, all holding Café Nero all-day top-up mugs, with gluten-free quinoa bars sticking out of the top pockets of their asexual, shabby, ill-fitting dungarees over their baggy, shapeless clothes, is more than a metaphor for today. We hear the lingering call, "Corbyn, Corbyn... Are you there, Corbyn?"

SUNDAY MORNING RATING: He's not there