Final blows dealt in Commons
Final round of questions sees clash of leaders
BORIS JOHNSON and Jeremy Corbyn faced each other in the final Prime Minister’s Questions before an election yesterday.
Mr Johnson said Mr Corbyn offers a “political disaster” and risks denying Britain a “glorious year” in 2020.
The Prime Minister said voters face a “stark choice” between Labour and the Conservatives on December 12, telling MPs it was the time for leadership rather than Mr Corbyn’s “politics of protest”, while Mr Corbyn hit out at the Government’s record on the NHS.
The Labour leader said the health service is in “more danger than at any other time in its glorious history” due to the PM’s attitude and desired trade deals.
Mr Corbyn, in his concluding remarks, said: “People have a chance to vote for real change after years of Conservative and Lib Dem cuts, privatisation and tax handouts for the richest; this Government that has put our NHS into crisis.
“This election is a once-in-ageneration chance to end privatisation in our NHS, give it the funding it needs and give it the doctors, the nurses, the GPs and all the other staff that it needs.”
Mr Corbyn maintained the NHS is “up for grabs” to US corporations in a “Trump-style trade deal”, adding: “Our health service is in more danger than at any other time in its glorious history because of his Government, his attitudes and the trade deals he wants to strike.”
Mr Johnson said of the choice facing voters: “It’s between economic catastrophe under the Labour Party, a £196bn programme taking money away from companies and putting it on his re-nationalisation programme, putting up taxes on corporations, on people, on pensions, on businesses, at the highest level in the whole of Europe.”
The PM added Mr Corbyn also “offers a political disaster”, claiming the Labour leader would be “consigning next year, which should be a wonderful year for our country, to two more referendums”.
Mr Johnson concluded: “Why on earth should the people of this country spend the next year, which should be a glorious year, going through the toxic, tedious torpor of two more referendums thanks to the Labour Party? We want next year to be a great year for our country.”
The pair had opened with tributes to outgoing Speaker John Bercow, an effigy of whom will go up in flames in Kent on Saturday as part of Bonfire Night celebrations.
But Mr Corbyn soon switched attention to fears of a “sell-out deal” with the US, which he warned threatened the NHS.
Mr Corbyn began by asking: “Why did the Prime Minister say the health service wasn’t on the table in any post-Brexit trade deal?”
Mr Johnson replied: “The answer to that is very simple, it is because it is not on the table.”
The PM went on to accuse Mr Corbyn of being “phobic” of American companies before the Opposition leader pressed on NHS shortages and waiting times, and asked how Mr Johnson had the “brass neck” to defend the Government’s record.
He quoted a letter from a woman whose mother died in February “as a direct result of the GP shortage in the UK”, with MPs hearing her last years were “marred by long waits for treatments and interventions”.
Mr Johnson said the Government “would deal with” the woman’s concerns.
42 The number of days until the country’s General Election on December 12.
IT IS harder to make the case for leaders’ debates during the General Election in the aftermath of Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn’s toxic exchanges at the last Prime Minister’s Questions of this shambolic Parliament.
Yet it will be a disservice to democracy if disagreements about the rules of engagement stand in the way of the Prime Minister, Leader of the Opposition and other key players going head-to-head to debate the key issues.
Such debates are customary in most democracies, notably the United States, and the regret is that there are no proper protocols in place nearly a decade after their introduction here during the 2010 election.
However, while many will contend, with reason, that such exchanges will provide an extension to the ritual trading of statistics, soundbites and insults that have so diminished PMQs, they will become more illuminating if the candidates for Prime
Minister were being questioned by panels of experts and voters.
Why not persuade the country’s top Brexit protagonists, and a crosssection of the population, to question the main leaders on the fine detail about Britain’s exit from the European Union?
Why not ask health and social care professionals, and also patients, to use their knowledge and insight to cross-examine the key candidates on the future of the NHS and care of the elderly?
And why not give the UK’s top economists, together with the owners of small businesses, a chance to scrutinise the many spending commitments which will be made in the coming days?
Chaired by a strong moderator, this has the potential to be far more constructive than PMQs which has become both predictable, and pointless, because Westminster’s partisanship has become so detrimental to the quality of political debate in the UK.