Come ahead, May
TRIUMPHANT Jeremy Corbyn mocked Theresa May yesterday as he challenged her to call another general election. The Labour leader thrilled delegates at the party conference in Brighton by insisting he is on the cusp of winning power. Corbyn defied expectations in June to deprive the Conservatives of a majority at Westminster. And in the biggest speech of his life yesterday, he taunted the Prime Minister. He said: “Take another walking holiday and make another impetuous decision. The Labour campaign is primed and ready to roll.” Corbyn told the Tories the country had put them on notice, and put Labour on “the threshold of power”. He admitted the increase in vote share at the election hadn’t been enough but it had made them “a government in waiting.” The left-winger said British politics had “finally caught up with the crash of 2008”, and a “new consensus” was emerging after years of austerity. And he declared parties no longer needed to cling to the centre ground to win elections. He said: “This is the real centre of gravity of British politics. We are now the political mainstream. “Our manifesto and our policies are popular because that is what most people in our country want, not what they’re told they should want.”
Mocking the Tories’ “Strong and Stable” slogan, he added: “We are ready, but the Tories are clearly not. We are strong and they are definitely not stable.”
He joked that the Tories are “are hanging on by their fingertips but they have one thing we lack, they have found the magic money tree”.
He added: “When it was needed to keep Theresa May in power it was given a good old shake – and now we know the price of power. Exactly £100million for every DUP MP.”
He branded cuts to welfare for sick and disabled people, “callous and calculated because the Tories calculated that making life worse for millions in the name of austerity would pay for hefty tax handouts for the rich and powerful”.
On Brexit, Corbyn welcomed May accepting Labour’s suggestion for a transition period with single market access but warned David Davis’s team risked bungling the negotiations and Britain crashing out without a deal.
He said: “We are now less than 18 months away from leaving the EU. So far, the Tory trio leading the talks have got nowhere and agreed next to nothing.
“This rag-tag Cabinet spend more time negotiating with each other than they do with the EU.
“A cliff-edge Brexit is at risk of becoming a reality.
“That is why Labour made clear that Britain should stay within the basic terms of the single market and a customs union for a limited transition period.
“It is welcome at least that Theresa May has belatedly accepted that.”