Stop hiding from your voters, PM
Corbyn challenges May on strong leadership claim
He issues new challenge to a live televised debate JEREMY Corbyn today firmly parks his battle tank on Theresa May’s lawn of “strong and stable leadership”.
In his hardest-hitting attack yet he challenges the PM to stop hiding from voters and come out fighting – if she dares.
And he declares that if she really believes leadership is the big election issue she should put it to the test in a head-to-head TV debate.
He says he will meet her “any time, any place, anywhere” in a televised showdown – a confrontation she has repeatedly ducked.
Mr Corbyn’s move to shift the battleground comes after Labour’s drubbing in local elections in which they lost 380 seats and the Tories gained more than 500.
The Labour leader says that does not mean Mrs May can now keep her head down for the rest of the campaign confident of victory. Throwing down the gauntlet, he writes in the Sunday Mirror: “The PM does not even trust herself to face voters. She spent last week hiding from them.
“They have the right to question us, to scrutinise us, to judge us on our integrity.”
Mrs May outraged voters on a visit to Bristol when she would talk only to paid-up Tory supporters. In Cornwall she was accused of hiding when she toured a factory and aides shut out journalists, who then continued to blog about the closed door.
In Leeds Mrs May chose to speak to 150 Tory activists at a community centre AFTER staff had left for the day.
And in Scotland she hid with 200 Tory campaigners in an isolated forest where journalists had no mobile coverage.
Yesterday Mrs May was in Wolverhampton, cosily hugging Tory Andy Street who was elected West Midlands Mayor on Friday. But wherever she goes, she chants the same line about “strong and stable leadership”. Mr Corbyn writes: “If Theresa May wants to make this election about leadership then let’s make it about leadership. She talks of leadership, but won’t say what she will do with it. “She asks the people of Britain to follow her but will not say where she is going.”
Meanwhile Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell trumped Mrs May yesterday on tax by pledging a triple lock on income tax, VAT and national insurance for 95 per cent of taxpayers.
Mr McDonnell told a London rally: “There’s only one party committed not to raise taxes on middle and low earners. The Tories hope the British people can be kept in the dark about what tax increases they are planning. And the PM will only visit workplaces if there are no workers there.”