A top aide to Jeremy Corbyn has been ridiculed after claiming the Labour leader likes taking trains to “obscure” places – such as Orkney.
Karie Murphy, who has been sidelined in Corbyn’s office, reportedly tried to prove her loyalty by telling a party staff meeting: “In essence, there’s nowhere we won’t go.
“Anybody who knows Jeremy knows he loves to go on trains to obscure places in the middle of nowhere – whether it’s the South West or Orkney.”
Despite being Scottish, Murphy apparently forgot Orkney is a chain of islands.
SNP deputy Westminster leader Kirsty Blackman said her remarks were “dismissive and insulting” and told Corbyn to apologise.
Alistair Carmichael, Lib Dem MP for Orkney and Shetland, said: “The train only goes as far as Thurso.
Presumably Karie Murphy expects him to walk the rest of the way.”
Murphy, whose background is in the Unite union, was Corbyn’s chief of staff in his private office, but was shuffled to a job in the Labour election campaign after a botched bid to remove deputy leader Tom Watson during this year’s party conference.
