Editorial Thursday 25 May 2017: Jeremy Corbyn lies about the late Andrew Roth's reputation for accuracy

Regular readers will be aware that I am not a particularly big fan of chocolate teapot Labour 'leader' Jeremy Corbyn.

If any further proof were needed that Mr Corbyn is an weapons-grade arsehole and onanist, he furnished it with his mendacious comments in a recent interview with Sophy Ridge on Sky News.

Mr Corbyn's target was the late Andrew Roth, whose columns on health and politics I had the pleasure of editing in my tenure running the British Journal of Healthcare Management.

Andrew Roth produced Parliamentary Profiles, a set of meticulously-researched biographies of all the MPs in the Houses of Parliament. He knew everything and everyone in Westminster politics. His work was definitive.

Mr Corbyn lied about Andrew Roth to Sophy Ridge in a recent Sky News interview as follows.

"Sophy Ridge: I am interested in that kind of issue of your character, your personality because you're asking people to vote for you to be the next Prime Minister of the UK, I just want to show you this editorial, taken from the London Labour Briefing magazine back in December 1984. Were you general secretary of the editorial board at the time when that was published?

Jeremy Corbyn: No, I wasn't even a member of the editorial board.

SR: You weren't a member of the editorial board? Because according to Parliamentary Profiles by Andrew Roth, an authoritative ...

JC: Andrew Roth has a wonderful reputation for having the most inaccurate Parliamentary profiles known to anyone.

SR: So you were not a member of the editorial board of that magazine in December 1984, definitive not?

JC: No. I read the magazine, I wrote for the magazine, but I was not a member of the editorial board."

Andrew Roth's son has discovered from his father's archives that Mr Corbyn had refused to tell Andrew Roth whether he was married because Corbyn regarded that as a private matter.

Andrew Roth routinely asked each MP to check, correct and sign a hard copy of their Parliamentary Profiles entry to confirm its accuracy.

The excellent Channel 4 News political correspondent Michael Crick tweeted "the late Andrew Roth in MPs Guide said JC was on LLB editorial board, & Roth twice wrote to JC requesting corrections to entry, but no reply ... In my 2016 book Militant I also said Corbyn was on London Labour Briefing editor' board, based, I think, on notes from reading old editions".

See also this thread of tweets, with documentary evidence of Mr Corbyn's LLB involvements.

He who can be trusted in small things can be trusted in great. Mr Corbyn reveals through his actions that he is a liar; a cowardly slanderer of a fine, widely-respected journalist; and a man wholly unfit to be an MP, let alone the leader of the Labour Party - or in contention to be the UK's next Prime Minister.