Tom Corbyn's National Hemp Service goes bust (and yes his dad is the Labour leader)

With less than three weeks to the General Election the leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has had some news he could do without. His youngest son Tom’s business as gone bust.

The National Hemp Service was launched earlier this year with a shop set to open in London in September but for undisclosed reasons it remained closed. On November 11 it was liquidated with a creditors’ voluntary liquidation with practitioner Lloyd Edwin Hinton appointed to wrap things up.

What went wrong remains a mystery since the store never opened. Unsurprisingly the Daily Mail have run the story under the headline: “Corbynomics really does make business go up in smoke! Labour leader son's 'National Hemp Service' selling cannabis products goes bust owing £100,000.”

Earlier this year the Islington Gazette said: “The entrepreneurial couple will unveil their "all hemp" shop and cafe in September, where every product will be made from the versatile crop, which is a strain of the cannabis sativa species.

“For Chloe and Tommy, sustainability and sourcing products from like-minded independent firms is the mission statement - and they plan to educate people about the fast-growing crop's bona fide medicinal, economic and eco attributes, while also campaigning for cannabis legalisation.”

Mid way through the election it isn’t helpful for the Labour leader although in general politicians tend to leave members of each other’s families alone. That unofficial agreement didn’t stop the Daily Mail from reporting the story with a certain amount of glee.

Richard Eden for the paper wrote: “Its collapse has infuriated its solitary investor Jeff Ditchfield, who has seen £30,000 from his pension fund go up in smoke. ‘My personal view is that it’s been put into liquidation because of mismanagement by the directors,’ said Mr Ditchfield.

“He first met Tommy Corbyn and his girlfriend Chloe Kerslake-Smith in February. ‘They contacted me,’ said Mr Ditchfield, 59, a veteran campaigner for the legalisation of cannabis and author of The Medical Cannabis Guidebook and Cannabis Cultivator. ‘They were looking for an investor and experience.’ Tommy Corbyn and Miss Kerslake-Smith stand to lose £70,000 between them, with each having invested just over £35,000, official paperwork reveals.”

In America, Canada, Holland, Uraguay and a growing list of countries hemp is big business worth billions - a fact that does leave question marks over the venture.

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Photo: the Sunday Times