Jeremy Corbyn has complained that the media have been “obsessed” with whether or not he called Theresa May a stupid woman, at the expense of focusing on more serious issues such as the plight of homeless people.
During a visit to Northampton, where he was visiting a homeless shelter, Corbyn told a BBC reporter who asked him about the alleged incident, that he had in fact called Conservative MPs “stupid people” for “turning the very serious issue of the failure to negotiate properly on Brexit into a pantomime” in parliament.
Asked if this nonetheless constituted not using respectful language, Corbyn said: “I muttered it to myself, actually, in parliament, and you and your colleagues in the media seem utterly obsessed with this. The fact that a homeless man died outside parliament has got no coverage whatsoever, and it should.”
Gyula Remes, a 43-year-old Hungarian national who was working as a kitchen assistant, died on Tuesday while sleeping at Westminster tube station, outside the entrance to parliament.
The Labour party later released a social media video in which Corbyn made the same argument. News of Remes’s death emerged late on Wednesday, and was covered by the Guardian the same day.
