U.K. Labour party has bad campaign day
Party’s platform was leaked, then leader’s car ran over cameraman’s foot
LONDON— After years of contesting Britain’s political centre ground, the opposition Labour party on Thursday agreed on what is likely to be its most left-wing election manifesto in more than three decades, complete with some eye-catching policies intended to shore up its core vote.
The document will be published next week, but a draft was widely leaked on Thursday as about 80 members of a Labour committee prepared to meet to discuss it.
In a further mishap, a car carrying Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn struck a television cameraman outside a party meeting.
The draft manifesto revealed plans to renationalize some rail and energy companies, scrap university tuition fees and put in place big increases in spending on health and social care.
Later, Corbyn said that the document had been approved in an amended form by a party committee, but he would not say which elements had changed.
“Our manifesto will be an offer, and we believe the policies in it are very popular,” Corbyn said, adding that there had been unanimous agreement on a program that would “transform the lives of many people in our society.”
The leaked draft — initially published by the Daily Mirror, the Daily Telegraph, the BBC and other news outlets — suggested that Corbyn, a left-wing politician, had broken decisively with the centrist legacy of most of his recent Labour predecessors, most notably with that of the former prime minister Tony Blair, who won three general elections.
Instead, Corbyn’s strategy contains echoes of Bernie Sanders, the U.S. senator who ignited liberal passions in his unsuccessful race for the Democratic presidential nomination last year. Labour’s manifesto also serves the more prosaic function of shoring up the party’s core vote as it approaches a difficult electoral contest June 8. A spokesperson for Labour, reached by telephone Thursday, declined to authenticate the document, saying the party’s policy was not to comment on leaks. But Andrew Gwynne, Labour’s national elections and campaign co-ordinator, speaking to the BBC on Thursday morning, did not deny the document’s authenticity.
Labour has not yet outlined how it would pay for its pledges, though Gwynne said that all costs would be accounted for when the final docu- ment is published next week.
The Conservatives and Labour’s other opponents seized on the leak as evidence that the party lacked discipline.
“This is a total shambles,” the Conservative party said in a statement. “Jeremy Corbyn’s plans to unleash chaos on Britain have been revealed. Jobs will be lost, families will be hit, and our economic security damaged for a generation if Jeremy Corbyn and the coalition of chaos are ever let anywhere near the keys to Downing Street.”
Britons will vote June 8 in a snap general election called by U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May. As if the leak were not enough, as Corbyn arrived Thursday for the meeting to discuss the manifesto, the car in which he was travelling ran over the foot of a BBC cameraman, the broadcaster reported. The cameraman, Giles Wooltorton, has been hospitalized.