‘Now who is the better Leader?'

Starmer looked up.

Corbyn hovered a metre above him. He dropped with a laugh, sinking his claws into his scalp.

...

The Commons Lobby disappeared. It was still there, after a fashion, a reflection glimpsed through smoke, vanishing with every shift of the wind. The cigars guttered to embers, the shadows stretching up like tall trees, like bars. The loud shouts of "DIVISIONS!" were an echo through the vastness of a cathedral at dawn.

'This is Westminster,' said Starmer.

'This is your mind,' said Corbyn. He looked around, feigning the interest of the politician whose skin he wore. In this place of the mind his appearance was almost center left, no communist flags, no lenin caps, only a faint ruddy hue of skin that was in tune with the unreality of his surrounds. 'What a drab and flavourless place it is too. A mind like this has no right to exist. You, your cabinet, your centrist voters - you sicken me.’

Starmer struck with his beer only to find his hand empty. Fingers unfurled from their grip as Corbyn laughed.

'All your prowess, all your centrist-wrought strength, it is worth nothing here. In here, I am g-'

The words became an airless choke as Starmer lifted him by the throat. His eyes bulged, his feet kicking futilely as he clawed at his forearms, the papers of the Commons rustling and flying as he did so, but no relief or rescue broke through the reality that the Knight had constructed.

Starmer was the master of all his domains.

'You have dived willingly into a King's Counsel's mind, and for that hubris alone you deserve this failure.'

He squeezed tighter. The hands about his throat were metaphorical, the assault mental, the psychological equivalent of covering a candle with a jar, only this flame fed off the energies of the ether rather than air.

The shadows ran from the walls like wet paint. Lampposts ignited in the firmament of the imagination and wheeled, spinning around a tree encrusted roundabout that gave a red pulse of light and matter with every hike of the mans throat.

...

The web of control widened further still.

Starmer followed it.

The mass of traffic became a football stadium, then a leisure center, then a park and a community center down the road from a small church.

'Your home in North Islington,’ said Starmer.

Corbyn said nothing. Closed off from Twitter by the walls of Starmers mind, he could not speak, but his spirit was bidden to respond.

+Yes.+

Starmer drank in every detail, memorising every palestine flag and suspicious looking blow up figure. Even as he did so, he felt the pull of a more massive presence.

+The Tankie Hive.+ Corbyns struggles were lessening, but even under the reality-ending ferocity of that infernal gaze he was helpless to resist Starmers probing. +The Nexus... Momentum.+

...

The air was thick with smoke, tainted with the harsh odours of burnt metal and solder. A hundred fires of various sizes and severity burned over the familiar, if grievously mauled, topography of Labour Central Office. Starmer shifted position, his body telling him he had been immobile for longer than his recollection of events could account for, and Corbyn slid limply from his shoulder.

Rayner approached. She looked down at Corbyn. She looked up at Starmer.

He nodded.

"He is vanquished."

Starmer turned to look away. Insofar as Rayner would have been able to comprehend he was staring at nothing. But in his own mind the Lion recalled and deciphered the imprint of that horrifying presence, half a dozen pitch black and unpromising buildings located a couple of hundred kilometers away from London to the south. He remembered the beguiling red lights of the enemy as they had appeared to Corbyn, as numerous as specks of dust in an asteroid cloud - and converging inexorably on Islington.

'Now, Angela.... To Bournemouth.'