Deliver Brexit or split Leave vote and put Corbyn in No10, warns Boris

JEREMY CORBYN will be “delivered” to Downing Street through a split in the Leave vote unless Britain exits the EU by the end of October, Boris Johnson has warned.

Labour’s narrow victory in Peterborough yesterday showed Mr Corbyn could win a general election because the Eurosceptic vote would be divided between the Tories and the Brexit Party, he said.

Other leadership candidates lined up to say the by-election result was “the shape of things to come” if the Conservatives did not deliver Brexit.

The Tories were comprehensively beaten into third place by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which lost out on returning its first MP by just 683 votes. The Lib-dems came a distant fourth.

Lisa Forbes, the new Labour MP for Peterborough, won with less than 31 per cent of the vote – a 17-point drop since the last election – the lowest winning vote share since the Second World War.

In a constituency that voted 61 per cent for Leave in 2016, more than half the vote went to Eurosceptic parties, but with the Brexit Party taking 29 per cent and the Tories 21 per cent, Labour were handed a “back door” victory, retaining the seat vacated by jailed exmp Fiona Onasanya.

Mr Johnson, who took part in the campaign in Peterborough, said the Tory candidate Paul Bristow “did not deserve to come third”, but warned: “The Conservatives must deliver Brexit by October 31 or we risk Brexit Party votes delivering Corbyn to No 10.”

Jeremy Hunt, the Foreign Secretary, said the result showed there was “no future” for the Conservatives unless Brexit was completed before a general election. “Any elections before then will just allow Corbyn to sneak through the middle,” he said. Esther Mcvey, another leadership contender, said: “The result in Peterborough is the shape of things to come if we don’t deliver a clean Brexit on October 31. Our persistent thwarting of the referendum result shows that a Brexit Party vote will let Jeremy Corbyn into No 10 by the back door.”

Supporters of Mr Johnson and other Brexiteer candidates said the result hugely strengthened their hand because it showed that only a committed Eurosceptic could see off the threat of the Brexit Party.

Owen Paterson, the former Cabinet minister who today confirms he is backing Mr Johnson for the leadership in an article for telegraph.co.uk, said the by-election result was “a final wake-up call” that showed the Tories could choose “oblivion” through more delay or elect a leader “determined to honour our promises to take us out of the EU by October 31”.

He writes: “Boris is the only candidate who can win back the support of those who have left the Conservatives for the Brexit Party, as polling this week has shown.

“He is the only candidate who can prevent the horror of a Corbyn government.”

The Conservative vote share was 25 percentage points down on the 2017 general election, one of the party’s worst ever reverses, as more than half of Conservative voters appeared to have deserted for the Brexit Party.

It came on the day that Theresa May formally resigned as Conservative Party leader via a brief exchange of letters with the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPS.

Mr Corbyn said: “Write off Labour at your peril.

“On the day that Theresa May ceases to be leader of the Conservative Party, my message is to all the squabbling contenders for the Tory party leadership, bring it on. We are ready for a general election.”

Ms Onasanya, who was forced out by a recall vote in the constituency after she was jailed for perverting the course of justice, had a majority of just 607 after the 2017 general election, meaning Labour increased its majority by 76, despite its slump in the overall vote

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