Sketch: Everything but owls for all

Having gained the controls, the person behind the hack posted the message: “Everybody should have his own owl.”

The post unleashed social media at its best - or worst, depending on your view - as Twitter users speculated on how this most audatious of policy pledges might be delivered, whether it would be a universal benefit or means-tested and whether they would be state-reared owls or private companies would be allowed to supply them.

One urged those looking for clarity on the policy to call “28, 28, 20” and pictures of Ed Miliband carrying owls proliferated.

All this sprang to mind as Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn reeled off promise after promise in the auditorium of the Richmond Building at Bradford University.

Resting on my knee was Labour’s 124-page manifesto and a supplementary six-page pamphlet explaning how the promises made in the weightier tome would be paid for.

A new rail network connecting northern cities. an extra £1.5bn for cash-starved councils, subsidised childcare on top of existing entitlements, free university tuition - it felt like an owl for everyone was just about the only promise that Mr Corbyn was not making to the voters.

And there were frequent whoops from those activists in the audience and watching from balconies above the Labour leader as he set out the most radical programme for government presented by any mainstream party for a generation.

There was rather less enthusiasm when journalist colleagues suggested there might be the odd hole in Labour’s sums and that Mr Corbyn’s personal unpopularity with the wider public might be an obstacle to his party’s chances.

“It’s alright. It isn’t the cult of personality,” Mr Corbyn told the audience.

But watching Corbyn’s Labour, quite often that’s exactly how it seems.