Corbyn’s Trump card is Donald
DONALD Trump’s visit to the UK next week cannot come fast enough for Jeremy Corbyn. The world leader that the Left loves to hate most of all flies into London on Monday for a Nato summit. Labour’s high command is pinning its hopes on the unpredictable US President for a campaign-changing moment in the General Election race.
With just 12 days to go until polling day, desperation is gripping Mr Corbyn and his comrades.
Opinion polls suggest the Labour leader is set to win the party’s lowest haul of Commons seats since the 1920s. His attempts to steer the election debate away from Brexit and bribe his way into Downing Street with offers of giveaways priced at hundreds of billions of pounds appears to be failing to significantly dent the Tory lead.
Now Mr Corbyn is left hoping Mr Trump will accidently help his cause. Labour aides will scrutinise every remark or Twitter from the President for anything that might be used to back up their claim that the NHS will be gobbled up by hungry American healthcare firms under a post-Brexit trade deal.
They also believe Boris Johnson will be tainted simply by being pictured with Mr Trump.
CERTAINLY, Conservative Campaign HQ is studiously expecting the unexpected as Air Force One comes into land. Tory insiders recognise that Mr Trump routinely ignores the diplomatic tradition of not intervening in foreign election campaigns. He is understood to want to speak out in support of his friend Mr Johnson and again warn of the dangers of a hard-Left Corbyn government.
Mr Johnson and Mr Trump are not scheduled to appear together at a news conference during the summit in London. “We will be keeping the visit very formal and separate from the election campaign,” said another Tory source.
“The Prime Minister will be welcoming a large group of world leaders to the summit.”
Mr Johnson’s team will use the
Nato talks as an opportunity to nudge the election debate towards defence, highlighting Mr Corbyn’s career-long dislike of the Western military alliance and opposition to nuclear deterrence. They will contrast the sight of the Prime Minister in discussions with the
UK’s allies with the Labour leader’s preference for chatting to members of Hamas, Hezbollah and the Irish Republican movement.
The potential for an unintentionally unhelpful intervention from Mr Trump is recognised by Tory officials. The President has shown a flimsy grasp of the sensitivities around the NHS in the past. There is also a danger of him linking up with his friend Nigel Farage as happened at the start of the campaign.
Yet Tory chiefs have plenty of reasons to be cautiously optimistic about the presidential visit. With the Brexit Party squeezed to below five per cent of support in recent polls, the Prime Minister’s decision to ignore Mr Trump’s advice to agree an electoral pact with Mr Farage appears to have been vindicated.
MORE significantly, the electorate has proved impervious to foreign interventions into the domestic political fray in the past. Mr Trump’s predecessor Barack Obama’s 2016 warning that the UK would be at the “back of the queue” for a trade deal with the US if the country voted to leave the EU had little impact on the EU referendum result.
Mr Trump’s visit is bound to provoke angry Left-wing demonstrations that will dominate coverage of the Nato gathering but end up forgotten by polling day. Mr Corbyn’s hope that Mr Trump’s presence will change the course of the election is almost certain to vanish like another Left-wing pipe dream.
MICHAEL Gove might have had a sense of déjà vu at a news conference alongside the Prime Minister in a room high up in Westminster’s Millbank Tower yesterday. The last time he was there, he was launching his ultimately unsuccessful Tory leadership bid by making cheeky digs at Mr Johnson’s private life.
TORY aides criticised for briefly rebranding the Conservative Campaign HQ’s official Twitter account as “factcheckUK” in an election stunt considered another wheeze. “We thought about changing the name to “LabourTruths” and then just leaving it blank for the rest of the campaign,” said one insider.
SIR Nick Clegg has been notably absent from the election campaign while Jo Swinson, his successor as Lib Dem leader, flounders in the spotlight. Unlike other former leaders including Tony Blair and Sir John Major, the ex-deputy prime minister has kept out of the debate. He must be far too busy with his job at Facebook.
JOHN Bercow is keeping tight-lipped about his political allegiances. “I’m not going to say how I’m going to vote,” the former Commons Speaker told Italian newspaper La Repubblica. Mr Bercow is set to be the first ex-Speaker in living memory to be allowed to vote because of Boris Johnson’s refusal to grant him the traditional perk of a seat in the House of Lords. That would have disqualified him from voting.
MIND has issued advice to candidates about caring for their mental wellbeing during the campaign. “We know the campaign trail can be immensely gruelling,” says Vicky Mash, from the charity. “We want to remind them at this highly pressured time to ensure they’re looking after themselves.” Voters could do with some advice too about enduring the dismal campaign.