Jeremy Corbyn is 'the maddest person in the room' says Bill Clinton

Former US President Bill Clinton and the husband of Democrat presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, called Jeremy Corbyn the "maddest person in the room" and a guy the Labour Party just got "off the street" in a speech published by Wikileaks.

Clinton, who was the US president from 1993-2001, made the comments in a private fund-raising speech. The document was part of a series of emails obtained from Hillary Clinton Campaign Chair John Podesta.

WikiLeaks released batches of documents as Hillary Clinton entered the final stages of her bid to become the first female president in the nation's history. WikiLeaks had threatened to release a "whopper" email during the election.

Clinton's spokeswoman, Jennifer Palmieri, even posted a pre-emptive tweet, saying: "Friends, please remember that if you see a whopper of a WikiLeaks in next two days – it's probably a fake."

According to WikiLeaks, Clinton's speech took place in Potomac, Maryland on 19 October 2015. Clinton said: "When David Cameron thumped [Ed Miliband] in the election, they reached the interesting conclusion that they lost because they hadn't moved far left enough, and so they went out and practically got a guy off the street to be the leader of the British Labour Party."

He added: "When people feel they've been shafted and they don't expect anything to happen anyway, they just want the maddest person in the room to represent them."

Clinton has long been seen as something of an electoral liability for his wife, who has had to defend him from rumours about his womanising habits when attacking Trump for his own sexist views.