The Londoner: Corbyn son grows his hemp empire

Jeremy Corbyn’s youngest son Tommy is preparing to open his hemp shop in the Labour leader’s Islington North constituency next month — and is extolling the plant as “part of the solution” to our Brexit woes.

The National Hemp Service will open on Stroud Green Road in September, and is the passion project of Tommy, 26, and his girlfriend Chloe Kerslake-Smith, 24, pictured. Every product will be made from hemp, a strain of cannabis.

Corbyn told the Islington Gazette yesterday: “We want to champion hemp as a material for all different things. We think cannabis has been demonised for a long time ... We don’t want people to be afraid of the plants. We want to help push legalisation forward — it’s the answer to a lot of our health and sustainability issues.

“Hemp offers a huge amount of solutions to the problems of today, in terms of agriculture, environment, even economically, if we all start growing hemp it would help.

“Especially in the Brexit environment when we are not going to be able to export much to the European Union, hemp is part of the solution.”

Items sold in the National Hemp Service will be sourced from like-minded independent firms. There are also plans to use the shop as a base for education and campaigning for cannabis legalisation.

Tommy is the third of Corbyn’s sons with his Chilean second wife Claudia Bracchitta. Corbyn famously missed Tommy’s birth because he was lecturing union members elsewhere in the same hospital. Tommy is also director of The Hemp Cafe, a separate company.

The shop — which has been in the works for some time — has been a DIY labour of love, and the pair are particularly proud of an impressive carved wooden sign positioned inside.

“There is only so much I can tell people,” Corbyn added. “I have to show them. It’s not a dingy smoking den ... We want people to come in and really go away having learned about the plant.”

Eco-activists pitch up at ‘Tory Glasto’

The Big Tent Ideas Festival — or Tory Glastonbury, as it’s sometimes known — has partnered with climate-change activists Extinction Rebellion for its event at the end of the month. Transport minister George Freeman founded the Big Tent Ideas festival in 2017 as a Tory alternative following Jeremy Corbyn’s rapturous reception at Glastonbury that year, but it has since become non-party political. The Big Tent Ideas Festival says it’s “unbelievably excited” to partner with Extinction Rebellion. The climate activists have yet to mention the partnership themselves.

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Guerilla activists Led By Donkeys launched their latest crowdfunding campaign for ironic billboards, to “fund a government no-deal Brexit ad campaign” with a caveat, that it must be “an honest one. Not Boris Johnson’s £100 million propaganda splurge”. Shots fired. The fundraiser has a £50,000 target — and has made about £14,000 thus far.

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Jacob Rees-Mogg is considering getting a family dog, on the request of his daughter Mary. Mogg told The Londoner that “the practicalities of living in two places make it difficult”, but “like most fathers I like to do what I am told by my daughter”. We fear it will be Nanny who is left to clean up the mess.

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Greta Thunberg hit the high seas off the coast of Plymouth yesterday, as preparation for her journey across the Atlantic later this month. The 17-year-old climate activist — and this month’s GQ cover star — will travel to New York to attend the UN Climate Action summit aboard the Malizia II, a 60ft, high-speed yacht owned by German property developer Gerhard Senft.

Meanwhile, model Kaia Gerber posed pool-side in a black silk slip and British Vogue editor Edward Enninful, presumably taking a well-deserved break before the onslaught of Fashion Month, shared a chiselled selfie from the first day of his holiday on Italy's Amalfi coast. Model and entrepreneur Miranda Kerr and her husband, Snapchat co-founder Evan Spiegel, matched in supersized shades. Comedian and illustrator Jessie Cave — who has a show at this year’s Fringe — showed off her Technicolor “dream trousers”. Summer rolls on ...

SW1A

Ed Miliband says he’s to blame for the UK’s lack of a codified constitution — after ignoring an email from Gordon Brown. On Christmas Day in 2004 (or possibly 2006, according to Miliband), Brown sent “a proposal for a written constitution”. He adds: “I was annoyed he’d emailed me on Christmas Day. Clearly I should have paid more attention to it.” But, Miliband (below) says, Tony Blair later gave his verdict that it was “not going to butter any parsnips”.

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Anna Soubry isn’t on the same page as her former Tory colleague David Gauke, who frolicked with an inflatable unicorn on his holidays. “Sensible Brits aren’t buying, #Unicorn #Brexit,” Soubry teased, adding, with a photo of her silver-painted toes in flip-flops, that sensible people were “confining flip flopping to the pool and beach.”

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SpAds have been banned from attending Lord’s for the Ashes as part of No 10 honcho Eddie Lister’s ban on leisure, which also includes outlawing summer holidays.

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Quote of the day: ‘Get your learn on, girl’ - Taylor Swift's note for a Canadian fan — after the singer made a £4,000 bank transfer to help pay off her student loan