Corbyn ‘car crash’ over tax questions

JEREMY Corbyn is facing fresh criticism of his performance in the Commons amid accusations he failed to press home the attack over Philip Hammond’s Budget U-turn on National Insurance contributions.

Critics branded the Labour leader’s response at Prime Minister’s Questions a “car crash” and called for a long, hard look at what went wrong.

Labour MP Tom Blenkinsop tweeted a clip of a Liverpool footballer famously hitting the crossbar from in front of an open goal, adding: “Can’t imagine why I recalled this Ronnie Rosenthal miss”.

Other Labour MPs compared Mr Corbyn’s performance unfavourably to former leadership contender Yvette Cooper, who mocked the Tories for abandoning spring budgets because “they just keep ripping them up”.

With the news of the U-turn having broken around 20 minutes before PMQs, Mr Corbyn began his allotted six questions by suggesting the Government was in “a bit of chaos”.

When Theresa May retorted that when it came to lectures on chaos, “he would be the first person I turned to”, Mr Corbyn responded by calling for a Government apology.

The Prime Minister’s terse reply seemed to catch him by surprise and it was a few moments before he rose to his feet again in front of the largely silent Labour benches.

His third question was about people forced into “bogus selfemployment by unscrupulous companies” while the final two were an attack on Conservative education policies, with a call for ministers to provide “a staircase for all, not a ladder for the few”.

Afterwards, former spin doctor Alastair Campbell tweeted: “Unless the Corbyn team actually planned for that to be a car crash the inquest should be long, hard and honest. He just can’t do it.”

Mr Corbyn was defended by shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, who said he had had little time to react to the news.

“We all know that they did this absolutely at the last minute,” she told BBC Radio 4’s The World At One. “So Jeremy changed tack. He asked questions about schools, he asked questions about social care and about the health service. He asked a question about, ‘Would you like to apologise to the self-employed who you have frightened by doing this?”’

A Labour source said Mr Corbyn had proved effective in holding the Government to account.

“He asked the questions that he wanted to ask and they focused on the key issues of the day,” the source said.