Sketch: Jeremy Corbyn remains indestructible – even with the blood of Brexit on his hands

He isn’t going to jump. His MPs might push him anyway. Trouble is, they know he’ll survive

Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn (Rob Stothard/Getty Images)

For more than a decade, a man by the name of Kevin Hines has made a very successful living, touring the world and telling captivated audiences about how he felt after deliberately jumping off San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and accidentally surviving.

It is the kind of lifestyle decision that is rare to hear talked of in retrospect, and so we shouldn’t be surprised that a large number of people turned up at the Maxwell Library in Central London to hear Jeremy Corbyn talk about the fact that, actually, maybe something needs to be done about immigration.

Safe in the certain knowledge that the kind of voter Labour has long been haemorrhaging to Ukip in its northern heartlands was the kind of voter that would decide the referendum, Mr Corbyn had sagely spent last Wednesday evening outlining how the best thing about the EU was freedom of movement. “Otherwise you end up with a system, like the US, Canada and Mexico, where there is no free movement of labour but there is free movement of capital, and that ends up exploiting workers in Mexico,” he explained, rightly sensing that the issue ordinary men and women were most concerned about was that Eastern European immigrants were receiving a fair wage.

It was a strategy described to the Huffington Post in the early hours of last Friday morning by a senior Labour source as “political suicide of genius proportions”.

“The millisecond my hands left the rail, it was an instant regret,” is Hines’s standard opening line. And, sure enough, here was Jeremy, with the burns from the nation’s total self-immolation still entirely raw, toddling up not even with the Savlon but the flame retardant spray.

“We have to move beyond the irresponsible debate that we sometimes have, that makes people afraid, or that accuses people of being Little Englanders or racists just for raising the issue,” he said, wisely sensing that it’s wrong to just nod along with someone when they make this very point, then get back in your car without realising you’re still wearing your TV mic and call them a bigoted woman.

He continued: “It is clear from the vote, and from the people I have spoken to across Britain, that there was a backlash against the free movement of people across the 28 nations in the European Union.” What is also clear from the referendum is that people who tend to vote Labour didn’t really get on board with the whole Labour In thing, which is why there has already been a no confidence motion in his leadership tabled by two of his MPs.

At the end, an impertinent journalist asked him if he would be standing down. “No, I’m still here,” he said, and the young Corbynista crowd whooped with delight. You’ve got to hand it to the youth: they do get over a hangover quickly. It’s not 24 hours since they were slung from the EU entirely against their wishes and when it comes to apportioning blame, here was the guy who’s right up there with the best of them but meh, whatever.

He did move on later, to the Pride rally in Central London, where he was pursued by an angry young man with a smartphone who filmed himself shouting “resign!” at Mr Corbyn and put the resulting video clips online. In one, a Labour activist is seen shouting how it was all “The Murdoch press! The Murdoch press!”

Newspaper influence is always a hard thing to gauge, but with the Sun and the Sunday Times backing Leave and the Times advocating Remain, that leaves old Rupert’s enthusiasm for Brexit somewhere around the “Ooooh, about seven-and-a-half out of ten” mark, which you might have heard someone or other say before.

“I did all I could!” Jeremy shouts back, which might or might not be true and is equally damning either way. He isn’t going to jump. His MPs might push him anyway. Trouble is, they know he’ll survive.