Street artist Loretto has painted an image of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn dressed up as the Italian monk St Francis of Assisi wearing sandals and with a halo of EU stars like a crown of thorns above his head.
The stencilled painting which was created this morning in full view of passers-by is on the corner of Mortimer Street and Newman Street and accompanies an image of Theresa May which the artist sprayed at the end of last month.
The artwork is on a wall on the Westminster side of Fitzrovia and in the safe parliamentary constituency of Conservative Mark Field MP.
Corbyn’s kindly eyes look forlornly across to the Camden side of Fitzrovia and the safe Labour seat of Keir Starmer MP.
Starmer, Labour’s leader in waiting, has lifeless lawyer’s eyes but he is seen by fellow MPs as a safe but dull pair of hands.
In Corbyn’s eyes there is the beauty of the natural world and his warm sense of humanity is embraced by the public sector workers who treat him with almost saintly reverence.
In presenting Corbyn as the Medieval monk, Loretto is both canonising and mocking him by comparing him to Margaret Thatcher who stood at the door of 10 Downing Street in 1979 and gave a speech paraphrasing the Peace Prayer starting with the words: “Where there is discord, may we bring harmony.”
The prayer is widely yet wrongly attributed to St Francis and it does not feature in any of his writings and only appeared in the early 20th century.