From the People's Republic of Islington

- or that's what the commentariat (and yes, that is a word that was coined before Mr Corbyn uttered it yesterday and one that will surely be in the next round of dictionary revisions) would have you believe. My response on hearing the speech live on BBC-Parliament was the same as that of Caron Lindsay who expressed it far better than I.

It was a nice touch to have a young trainee lawyer of clearly south Asian heritage to make the introduction as a constituent of Mr Corbyn's. (I wish we could get across that the Liberal Democrats welcome liberals and social democrats from whatever background. Our image of overwhelmingly pink faces must put minority ethnic people off, but I would assure them that the door to the party is open. It just needs a little push.) She embodied the basic appeal of Mr Corbyn, as an assiduous local MP who genuinely cares for people - a quality he shares with Tim Farron, but of course the policies in the national arena are what count.

I would only add that the objection to Mr Corbyn's use of pre-published text in his speech is rather synthetic. Very few political leaders produce genuine innovations on the public platform. Their speech-writers are prone to make use of hand-me-down tropes and even whole sections supplied by pressure groups. If Mr Corbyn found a neatly-expressed passage which encapsulated his own political philosophy, so what? It is the content which should be criticised, not its origin.