CORBYN CATASTROPHE FOR OUR ECONOMY

In a typically colourful interview, the PM tells our Political Editor...

BORIS JOHNSON is hurtling north towards the ‘red wall’ of Labourheld seats as he directs his fire against Jeremy Corbyn’s hard-Left Election manifesto. As key electoral battlegrounds flash past his train window, the Prime Minister describes Mr Corbyn’s planned £ 400 billion spending splurge and soak-the-rich tax rises as ‘a total sledgehammer to the economy’, adding: ‘Even the most Left-wing commentators are stupefied by the recklessness.’

The Prime Minister will this afternoon head back to the ‘wall’ – the target constituencies in the Midlands and the North which are on the brink of abandoning their historic attachment to Labour – to launch the Conservatives’ manifesto.

It was at this point in the 2017 Election that Theresa May’s campaign left the tracks, with the disastrous ‘ dementia tax’ derailing her hopes of a majority and leaving Brexit trapped in political purgatory.

Seared by the memory, Mr Johnson will launch a safety-first set of policies: if his advisers suggested that there was any risk attached to a policy, they were ditched before they left the draft stage. ‘It is all totally costed and sound,’ Mr Johnson promises.

The reaction to Labour’s splurge – with the nonpartisan Institute for Fiscal Studies leading the criticism by dismissing the plans as simply not credible – has been a gift to Tory strategists.

Mr Johnson, speaking exclusively to The Mail on Sunday as he finalised his manifesto, argues that Labour’s blueprint for office is so economically illiterate that it should be seen as a giant

cat’* ‘dead – the phrase coined by his Australian political strategist Lynton Crosby to describe the strategy of throwing a ‘dead cat on the table’ to divert critical attention.

‘I think he’s trying to dead cat the absence of a Brexit policy,’ said Mr Johnson. ‘He’s making up for what everybody can see is the gaping

inanition* void, the vast at the heart of it.’

Mr Johnson’s manifesto promise of a ‘triple lock’ tax pledge is a pitch directly to the Tory heartlands appalled by Mr Corbyn’s plans to raise income tax for people earning £80,000 or more, introduce a new ‘super-rich rate’ for people earning more than £125,000 and hike property taxes. Mr Johnson vows not to raise income tax, VAT or National Insurance over the course of the next Parliament.

He says: ‘I want to protect people from rises in taxation.

‘I think people have had a lot of tax rises over the last few years. People on modest incomes have been very heavily taxed.’

This fiscal hawkishness will be balanced by efforts to avert a repeat of the 2017 Corbyn surge, which fed off the discontent – particularly among younger voters – over the years of public spending discipline instituted by David Cameron’s government.

So the Tories are also turning on the spending taps, with substantial sums being pledged for public services, including an extra £34 billion a year for the NHS by 2024.

Despite private warnings from Chancellor Sajid Javid that the spree could jeopardise the party’s reputation for sound financial management, Mr Johnson is adamant that the books can be balanced by ‘turbocharging’ the economy. The tax triple lock – which is in addition to the triple lock which protects pensioners’ i ncomes – will be combined with an i ncrease in the National Insurance threshold if Mr Johnson is returned to Downing Street.

‘ We can do this by having a dynamic economy,’ he said. ‘Every employee will get a tax cut. That will put £500 into people’s pockets’.

The manifesto will be packed with ‘ doorstep’ policies – the issues which are most frequently raised with MPs when they are out canvassing but are often neglected by the national media, such as the potholes blighting our roads.

Mr Johnson, who was a familiar sight on his bicycle in London before security considerations forced him back into a Government car, vowed to tackle the problem after being sent flying from his bike after riding into one. He said: ‘This is something that will make such a difference to people’s lives. There was one time when I was cycling that I came off [because of one]. We are putting £2 billion into it – the biggest ever pothole filling programme in history.’

Likewise, there will be £1 billion more for childcare breakfast clubs and after-school services, £78 million to end hospital parking rip-offs and energy efficiency measures for homes to cut bills.

Ever-conscious of the 2017 fiasco, the Prime Minister insists that he is not ‘complacent’ and is ‘fighting for every vote’, but his demeanour and spirit imply that the private polling projections he receives every morning have been encouraging.

If he wins a mandate, Mr Johnson will try to speed the legislation approving his Brexit deal through the Commons in the days before

Christmas and take us out of the EU by the end of January – what he describes as an ‘early Christmas present to the nation’ to allow people to ‘enjoy their festive season free from the seemingly unending Brexit box-set drama’.

Mrs May – who had a tense relationship with Mr Johnson when he was in her Cabinet – could be forgiven for experiencing mixed emotions if he succeeds where she failed.

‘Everyone remembers what happened at the last Election,’ says Mr

Johnson. ‘Theresa and I talk now and then and actually she has been very supportive.’

Mr Johnson also tore into Mr Corbyn for using the manifesto launch to say that he ‘welcomed the hatred’ from high-earners, businesses and property owners which greeted his policies. ‘I’m about the politics of hope,’ he said. ‘It’s a fantastic thing that we should salute wealth creators – and not try to foment hatred between one side of the economy and the other.’

Mr Johnson dismissed Mr Corbyn’s promises as ‘ worthless’ because the Labour leader was paralysed with indecision over his Brexit strategy: Mr Corbyn dismayed many of his Remain-supporting backers during the Sheffield debate by saying that he was ‘neutral’ on how to vote in any second referendum.

The Prime Minister said: ‘There’s a black hole at the heart of his political and economic strategy for the country. We don’t know what he wants to do on Brexit which is the thing that’s been holding us back for the last three-and-a-half years.

‘Search parties are being sent out to find what Labour’s position is. On the fundamental issues it’s between the Bermuda Triangle, the Riddle of the Sphinx and Fermat’s

People have had enough of tax rises. We’ll put £500 back in their pockets

Theorem*, Last except it’s crucial to our national interest. We literally don’t know.

‘Whilst maintaining fiscal prudence, whilst supporting business and enterprise you can do things with infrastructure, education and technology that will be really transformative and that’s what we want to do.

‘We want to give every kid growing up in this country the same opportunity to make the most of their talents, it’s a very, very ambitious one-nation Government. We are going to govern in a fiscally responsible way but we are going to invest for the long term whilst interest rates are low – and they will be low for the foreseeable if we manage things right.’

Speculation has been rife in Westminster over recent months about the state of Mr Corbyn’s health, and whether he would even be physically strong enough to handle the job of Prime Minister. While Mr Johnson insists it is not appropriate for him to comment on Mr Corbyn’s fitness, he does then add pointedly: ‘What we have to offer is a government that is full of energy.’

To keep up his own energy levels,

Mr Johnson says he has given up drinking alcohol until Brexit is achieved – although he is mildly evasive when asked if he will stick to the pledge on Christmas Day.

The vow has led to complications on the campaign trail: ‘I went to a distillery and I wet my lips – if not my whistle – with a little bit of whisky and then I had maybe a quarter of an inch of a pint of beer for similar reasons.

‘They needed a photo and it would have been rude not to.’

Back at No 10, Mr Johnson has settled into a contented routine with girlfriend Carrie Symonds and dog Dilyn, whom he takes for contemplative walks in the Downing Street garden at 6am each day.

Dilyn has so far proved resistant to house-training, but the Prime Minister insists that he is ‘getting there’ and is in ‘great shape’.

Carrie has helped to smarten up Mr Johnson’s formerly shambolic image: he waggles his spotty tie as he says: ‘Carrie has strong views about these things and I tend to knuckle under.’

As the train pulls into Newark station, and Mr Johnson prepares to leap off to visit a local hospital, he reflects on what his political hero – and biographical subject – Winston Churchill would have made of the prospect of a Corbyn government.

‘The great thing about Churchill is that when he decided to do something he stuck to it. He sometimes got it wrong, but at least he tried to explain it to people,’ he says.

‘Churchill would have said that Jeremy Corbyn’s policy on Brexit is a mystery wrapped inside an enigma inside a conundrum.’