Shadow health secretary forced
● Senior Labour MP humiliated by damning secret recording ● Facebook profile behind hospital photo conspiracy ‘hacked’
Labour’s shadow health secretary was forced into a humiliating apology after he was caught on tape giving a withering assessment of Jeremy Corbyn and claiming his party would lose tomorrow’s election.
Jonathan Ashworth said the situation facing Labour was “abysmal” because voters “can’t stand Corbyn” and think the party has “blocked Brexit”.
The shadow health secretary, seen as one of Mr Corbyn’s closest allies, is heard saying on the recording about the prospect of the Labour leader becoming prime minister: “It’s not going to happen! I can’t see it happening.”
He sought to dismiss his remarks as “banter”, but cancelled an interview with BBC
Radio 5 Live and later apologised to his party.
Mr Ashworth had been expecting to capitalise on a chaotic day for the Conservatives on Monday, triggered by the Prime Minister’s refusal to look at a photo of a four-yearold boy forced to sleep on a hospital floor.
But Labour’s attempt to drive home its advantage on the NHS was derailed when the Guido Fawkes website published a recording made by a Tory activist and friend of Mr Ashworth.
In the conversation, Mr Ashworth claimed that the Civil Service machine would “pretty quickly move to safeguard security” if Mr Corbyn entered Number 10.
He also said Labour MPS had “f ***** it up” in 2016 in their attempt to remove the Labour leader by acting “too early”.
And asked what will happen to Mr Corbyn if Labour fails to deny the Tories a majority tomorrow, Mr Ashworth suggests a change of leadership will follow. “That’s the thing that’s on our minds… I think things can change quickly; I think things change more quickly anyway now.”
Confrontedabouttherecording minutes after it had been released yesterday, Mr Ashworth admitted it made him “look like a right plonker”, but said he made the remarks while “joking around” with friend Greig Baker.
“We’re having banter with each other – we’re joking around,” he told the BBC’S Victoria Derbyshire show. “It’s not what I mean when I’m winding up a friend – I’m trying to sort of pull his leg a bit.”
Mr Ashworth said he was “saddened” that a friend had leaked the conversation. Mr Baker, who stood down as Conthe servative association chairman in Canterbury earlier this year, heads a political consultancy firm.
Mr Ashworth apologised to Labour Party members, and suggested he was trying to “psych” his friend out “like football managers do”.
“Obviously, with the benefit of hindsight, I’ve been too clever by half and I look like an idiot as a result of doing it,” he later told the BBC’S Politics Live.
Tory Party chairman James Cleverly called the remarks an “honest and truly devastating assessment” of Mr Corbyn’s leadership “by one of his most trusted election lieutenants”.
Meanwhile, a social media account which was the source of claims that the photograph of four year-old Jack Willment-barr was staged was hacked, according to reports.
Posts from a Facebook account claiming to belong to a nurse who had a “good friend” at the Leeds General Infirmary were shared on social media, claiming that the boy “was in fact put there by hismotherwhothentookphotos on her mobile phone and uploaded it to media outlets”.