Yahoo News Andrew Sparrow's election briefing: a day of reverse psychology banter
A false sense of security
Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, has been told he retains Jeremy Corbyn’s backing after a tape of a private conversation was released in which Ashworth said Labour was certain to lose the election and Corbyn was a major reason why. In the 11-minute recording Ashworth said:
Outside of the city seats, if you are in small-town Midlands and north, it’s abysmal out there. They don’t like [Boris] Johnson, but they can’t stand Corbyn and they think Labour’s blocked Brexit …
The electoral map is going topsy-turvy because of Brexit, and because of Corbyn. The question is for Labour, if it gets itself a half-decent leader next time round, whether it can reverse and regain its traditional heartland seats …
Johnson and CCHQ would have to massively fuck it up in the last week [to lose the election].
The recording was obtained by the anti-Labour website Guido Fawkes and posted online this morning. Ashworth immediately accepted that the tape, which seems to have been recorded early last week, was genuine. He was talking to a Tory activist he had known for years and whom he considered a friend, he said. Ashworth initially said his comments, which included a vague hint that Corbyn might be considered a security risk by officials in No 10, were “banter”, and later he expanded on this, saying he was deliberately trying to lull the Tories into a false sense of security. He told the BBC’s Politics Live (no relation to the original Guardian Politics Live):
[My friend] was ringing me. I was talking to him. He was saying his sources at CCHQ say Labour’s doing well. I’m doing the old, what Alex Ferguson would do, football manager kind of thing, trying to psych him out, saying, ‘No, you’re going to win, don’t worry about it’, because I know he’s an activist in Canterbury, I’m trying to make him complacent.
If Ashworth really was engaged in a cunning attempt to mislead CCHQ, he is a better actor than people have given him credit for and clearly has potential as a double agent. (You can listen to the recording here and decide for yourself what to think.) Notwithstanding, he apologised to Labour members. And Corbyn indicated that he accepted Ashworth’s explanation, telling the BBC:
Jon has my full support and I’m cool with Jon, we get along great. He said to me it was all about reverse psychology banter as in football supporters, and the other person was saying the opposite about their party and it all got a bit out of hand.
In politics, as in most walks of life, people do say disobliging things about their bosses in private from time to time and Ashworth’s comments were relatively mild compared to some of the comments made about Corbyn by his MPs behind his back. In public at least, Ashworth’s colleagues have been supportive. Most of them probably feel understandable sympathy for the way Ashworth appears to have been let down by a longstanding friend he thought he could trust.
Stop Brexit party might stop Brexit, warns Johnson
Boris Johnson has said it is “very hard” to see Brexit happening if the Tories fail to get a majority. Speaking at a Q&A at a JCB factory, he said:
I don’t see any alternative but a working majority to deliver [Brexit] … Nicola Sturgeon has just hired a bus with ‘Stop Brexit’ on it, so she’s obviously not in favour of it. And she’s the only way that Jeremy Corbyn can remain in office. So it is very hard to see how we do it without a working-majority Conservative government. That’s what we need to go for.
Meanwhile
Johnson has given his strongest hint yet that he is not planning to scrap HS2.
Nigel Farage, the Brexit party leader, claimed Johnson has changed his Brexit strategy within the last week, opting for a softer version. Farage said this explained why he would not be voting Tory in his own constituency, where the Brexit party aren’t fielding a candidate. In truth, Johnson’s Brexit plan has not changed, but Farage is right to say that on the campaign trail Johnson has increasingly been suggesting that the fact he has an “oven-ready” withdrawal agreement ready to go (which is true) also means that his eventual UK-EU trade deal is also nearly complete (which is not true at all).
Jo Swinson has accused Boris Johnson of showing “an empathy bypass”, as the Liberal Democrats made a final push to persuade traditional Labour supporters to vote tactically and deny the Conservatives a majority.
A medical secretary has claimed her Facebook account was hacked after it was used to post false information claiming that a photograph of an ill boy on the floor at Leeds general infirmary was staged for political purposes.
The father of Jack Merritt, who was murdered in the London Bridge terrorist attack last month, has directly criticised the prime minister for treating his son’s death as a political “opportunity”.
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