Election is too close to call, warns Cummings
Labour leader’s 451 pages of ‘NHS for sale’ evidence fails to divert attention from anti-semitism crisis
A HUNG parliament remains “a very real possibility”, Boris Johnson’s most senior adviser warned, as he insisted the Tories and Labour were much closer than polls suggested.
Dominic Cummings voiced fears about complacency costing the Conservatives the election after a seat-byseat analysis showed Mr Johnson on course for a 68-seat majority.
Mr Cummings, who ran the successful Vote Leave campaign with Mr Johnson three years ago, said he had “looked very carefully at the numbers” and predicted that Jeremy Corbyn could still become prime minister if the Brexit Party picked up votes in marginal seats.
Like other government advisers, Mr Cummings quit his Downing Street role when the election was called, enabling him to work for the Conservatives during the election campaign.
A Yougov poll last night predicted the Conservatives would win a 68-seat majority by taking seats in Labour heartlands in the north and Midlands.
The seat-by-seat analysis, using a technique that correctly predicted the 2017 hung parliament, suggested the Tories would win 359 seats, Labour 211, the Lib Dems 13, SNP 43 and others 24.
It would represent the largest number of seats won by the Tories since 1987 and the fewest seats won by Labour since 1983.
Among 44 Labour seats that Yougov predicted the Tories would take are the West Bromwich East seat vacated by
Tom Watson, the departing Labour deputy leader, and the Bolsover seat held by Dennis Skinner since 1970.
The Tories were also predicted to win Darlington, Scunthorpe, Dudley North, Wakefield and two seats in Stoke-on-trent, and would be close to taking Sedgefield, Tony Blair’s old seat.
A separate Savanta Comres poll for The Daily Telegraph put the Tories on 41 per cent, down a percentage point from last week, with Labour up two on 34, the Lib Dems down two on 13 and the Brexit Party on 5.
It came as Mr Corbyn refused once again to apologise for Labour’s failure to get a grip on anti-semitism in its ranks, despite front bench colleagues saying sorry. In an attempt to divert attention, he called a press conference at short notice to produce a leaked document that he said showed the NHS was “up for sale” in trade talks with the US.
But his plan backfired when he faced yet more questions about anti-semitism. Barry Gardiner, his shadow trade secretary, snapped at one reporter who asked whether Labour was on the side of Jewish people. Mr Corbyn’s own colleagues admitted that his 451-page dossier did not amount to a “smoking gun”, while the Tories accused him of “outand-out lying” about its contents.
Writing in today’s Daily Telegraph, Dame Louise Ellman, the former Labour MP, who is Jewish and who quit the party in October, says Mr Corbyn is “unfit to be prime minister”.
Despite the Tories’ consistent lead, Mr Cummings wrote a blog that he called a “bat signal” – the distress sign used to summon Batman – to warn that “Brexit is in danger”.
He said: “Trust me, as someone who has worked on lots of campaigns, things are much tighter than they seem and there is a very real possibility of a hung parliament.”
IT WAS meant to be a political “dead cat” – a moment that stopped everyone talking about anti-semitism in Labour and refocused attention on alleged plans by the Tories to “sell off the NHS”.
But it did not quite work. After all, the moribund feline in question – 451 pages of leaked minutes of six trade talk meetings with the US – contained barely a mention of the NHS.
Journalists had been called to the morning press event with Jeremy Corbyn and Barry Gardiner, the shadow trade secretary, amid overnight headlines detailing how Mr Corbyn refused four times in a BBC interview to apologise to Britain’s Jews for his failure to root out anti-semitism in the Labour party.
Addressing his audience at Church House, a few hundred yards from Parliament, the Labour leader held up a previously released redacted version of the summary of UK/US trade talks.
Then, with a theatrical flourish, he fished into a black case to produce the same document, but this time without lines of text blacked out. NHS doctors in surgical scrubs started to hand out copies to the journalists.
“We have now got evidence that under Boris Johnson the NHS is on the table and will be up for sale,” Mr Corbyn said: “He tried to cover it up in a secret agenda and today it has been exposed.”
He added: “Everything in these documents that I’ve revealed to you this morning indicates that a trade deal with the United States will actually increase the length of patient time and increase the amount that our NHS has to pay for medicines.”
The documents covered six rounds of discussions between British and US officials. Yet the political damage to the Prime Minister was limited when it became clear that the NHS was mentioned just four times in 451 pages and only covered a period of July 2017 to November 2018 – before Mr Johnson entered 10 Downing Street.
The unredacted documents, marked “Official – Sensitive (UK eyes only)”, also named the civil servants involved in the trade talks, leading to criticism that Labour had potentially put them at risk of interference by foreign powers.
The papers showed that while the
US wanted NHS medicine prices to form part of any trade deal, there was no evidence that ministers had agreed or that the NHS was up for sale.
Asked if Labour had “firm evidence that ministers were prepared to put the NHS up for sale”, Mr Gardiner said it “doesn’t take six meetings and 450 pages to say the NHS is not for sale. I think you have to be realistic. That is a very long way of saying no. In fact it is saying yes, and let’s discuss how”.
Labour’s claims were also at odds with the Tory manifesto, which states: “When we are negotiating trade deals, the NHS will not be on the table. The price the NHS pays for drugs will not be on the table. The services the NHS provides will not be on the table.”
Conservatives were quick to turn the attention back to the issue Mr Corbyn seemed desperate not to address. Liz Truss, the International Trade Secretary, said: “Jeremy Corbyn is getting desperate and is out-and-out lying to the public about what these documents contain. He has always believed in conspiracy theories, which is why he has failed to crack down on the scourge of anti-semitism in his party.”
Questions soon began to be asked about the timing. The Daily Telegraph understands Labour obtained the document within the last two days – despite it being available online for weeks.
This fuelled speculation that Mr Corbyn had intended to use it during next week’s visit to the UK by Donald Trump for a Nato summit but decided to produce it early to stop people talking about anti-semitism.
At the press conference he still refused to offer a fresh apology on antisemitism, saying: “It was made clear when I was elected leader and after that, that anti-semitism was unacceptable in our party and in society and did indeed offer sympathies and apologies to those who had suffered.”
Away from Church House other ministers in the shadow cabinet were more forthcoming. Nia Griffith, shadow defence secretary, told a debate in Wales: “I would say absolutely that we need to apologise to our colleagues in my own party who have been very upset but to the whole of the Jewish community as well.” John Mcdonnell, shadow chancellor, told LBC radio: “I’ll repeat it again, I’m really sorry [for] the way we handled it initially, because we’ve learnt lessons from that.”
Sir Keir Starmer, shadow Brexit secretary, said: “I’m not afraid to say sorry for the way that we’ve handled these cases and I and others will redouble our efforts to make sure that we improve.”
Even a leading academic who helped oversee an independent inquiry into Labour’s anti-semitism crisis, accused the party of failing to “comprehend and deal with racism in its own ranks”.
Prof David Feldman, formerly vice chairman of the Chakrabarti Inquiry into anti-jewish abuse in Labour, warned: “The anti-semitism problem is neither simple nor contained: the issue is one of anti-semitism, not antisemites. This is something that will only be addressed by education, contrition and a leadership able to recognise and explain to members how racism can enter a political party, even one that conceives itself as the embodiment of anti-racist principles.”
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury pitched in, saying: “One of the things we’ve learned in the Church of England is that repentance, which is a sortof technical churchy kind of word, means both acknowledging where things have gone wrong but also changing course and action.”
Only Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary, disagreed, asking on Twitter: “Why the insistence Corbyn won’t say sorry to Jews?” Citing some examples, she added: “He has done so many times.”
Last night both the BBC and ITV led their main early evening bulletins on Mr Corbyn’s NHS claims but one thing was clear: if Mr Corbyn wanted to steer conversation away from anti-semitism, he would need a bigger dead cat.
‘Jeremy Corbyn is getting desperate and is out-andout lying about what these documents contain’