Police are investigating after a car carrying Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn ran over a BBC cameraman.
Giles Wooltorton was filming Corbyn’s arrival at an emergency meeting to discuss the recent leak of the party’s manifesto when the car carrying the leader ran over his foot. He was quickly attended by a medic.
His colleague, BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg, was seen crouching by Wooltorten and asking him what had happened as they waited for an ambulance to arrive.
A short while later, a policeman arrived on the scene and started taking witness statements from other journalists congregating in the area.
Matt Spencer, an assistant producer for Channel 4 and Channel 5 news, tweeted a series of images from the scene, reporting that Wooltorton was in pain, but “in good spirits”.
In an apparently bizarre twist, pictures taken of Corbyn looking around in the car as the incident happened appear to show him sitting next to Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise, sending Twitter into meltdown. In fact, the man is believed to be Momentum activist James Schneider.
The incident is yet another PR catastrophe for Corbyn, who pulled out of a planned unveiling of the party’s first general election poster Thursday morning to assess the damage caused by the manifesto leak.
Election coordinators Andrew Gwynne and Ian Lavery stepped in, as Corbyn instead made his way to an emergency “Clause IV” meeting of senior party members and union bosses to determine which policies will make it into Labour’s finalised manifesto.
Speaking to the BBC’s Today programme, Mr. Gwynne admitted the manifesto leak was “not ideal”, but added: “On the plus side, we are all talking about the Labour Party this morning.”