Richard Leonard fading out of existence

Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard has begun to fade completely from existence, disappearing from photographs and failing to gain the attention of anyone even when he plaintively shouts.

It is understood Leonard’s existential crisis has grown for some time, but recently intensified into full-spectrum disintegration like the birth of a supermassive black hole.

Inside sources claim the condition only worsened following a meeting with John McDonnell this morning, where the Shadow Chancellor seemed to be unable to see or hear Mr Leonard and consequently left Scotland later than expected.

At the talks, Leonard is reported to have said: “John! John! John! John! John! Please! Can none of you hear me? Please! John! John, I beg of you! Don’t let me be but nought! John!”

According to cafe staff, McDonnell wandered around the venue for around ten minutes as if looking for someone, before eventually shrugging and remarking “he’s still easier to pin down than Jeremy.”

A senior inside Scottish Labour told The Daily Belter: “Richard is besides himself. Well, he’s besides himself and behind himself and neither of those things. His location is less and less fixed as he materially fragments.

“He leaves a kind of grey mist in his wake that blows away when you open a door or a window it just blows away. He’s the first non-linear leader of Scottish Labour.”

Mr Leonard is the latest leader of the Scottish party to suffer a grisly fate, after Jim Murphy successfully became a homeless man and Kezia Dugdale became trapped inside two vending machines.

In a brief note scrawled on a Holyrood wall with a piece of charcoal, Leonard seemed to begin writing a resignation letter that read: “I would like to thank Donald Dewar for his immense legacy. He told me he loves his statue. But the shadows are twitching now. I better get to the point before it’s too l”

Asked for a comment, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said: “What has four lips and couldn’t give two shits?”

There are echoes of the Scottish Labour leader still around if you care to listen, though a recent poll suggests few do.