SPEECHLESS!
Corbyn caught out pretending he watches the Queen’s Speech in the morning* *We’ve only been listening to royal Christmas message at 3pm for last 87 years
JEREMY Corbyn yesterday claimed he watches the Queen’s Speech on Christ- mas morning – but it is always shown at 3pm.
The mistake came in a toecurling interview recorded by ITV. By last night the Labour leader was being openly mocked over it as a man who could not be trusted on anything. One Tory said: “Corbyn doesn’t even lie convincingly.” After repeated questions by presenter Julie Etchingham, Mr Corbyn was unable to give a straight account of his Christmas Day. The party leader’s latest car crash interview, to be broadcast tonight, came as the veteran Left-winger tried to improve his dire personal poll ratings by talking about his home life. Instead he failed
to give straight answers. When Mr Corbyn tries to claim he watched the Queen’s address to the nation “some of the time” in the morning, Ms Etchingham informs him that the Monarch’s words are always broadcast in the afternoon.
A squirming Mr Corbyn then tries to wriggle his way through the embarrassment by suggesting the 3pm programme is a repeat.
In fact, the royal speech has remained in the same 3pm slot since it was first broadcast on radio in 1932 by the Queen’s grandfather, some 17 years before the 70-year-old politician was born.
Ms Etchingham challenges: “It’s not on in the morning. It’s at three o’clock in the afternoon.”
Mr Corbyn tries to dodge the
Exercise
subject. But Ms Etchingham presses him, saying: “So you don’t sit down as a family to watch the Queen’s Speech?”
Mr Corbyn says that his family “doesn’t watch television very much on the day”.
He then claims that he likes “to do a bit of exercise on Christmas morning”, leading to Ms Etchingham to once again point out that the speech first airs in the afternoon.
She finally asks: “You don’t watch it, do you, Mr Corbyn?”
He responds by suggesting there is “lots to do” on the day, and he makes a visit to a local homeless centre.
The Labour chief adds that if elected he would let homeless people live in Chequers, the country house for the use of the Prime Minister in Buckinghamshire.
Paul Scully, deputy chairman of the Conservative Party, said the interview proves that the Labour leader cannot be trusted.
He added: “It’s clear that Jeremy Corbyn can’t be straight with the British people.
“If he’s prepared to lie to you about watching the Queen at Christmas it’s clear he can’t be trusted to run the country.”
Veteran Tory Michael Fabricant last night said: “Corbyn not only doesn’t do his homework, he doesn’t even lie convincingly! Is this the sort of person we want as a
Prime Minister?” Nigel Evans, also a prominent and long-serving Tory backbencher, mocked the hardLeft Labour leader, saying: “If it was a broadcast from his favourite despot, Venezuela’s Maduro, he would have it on continuous loop in the Corbyn household.
“It’s pathetic he can’t give an honest answer to a simple question. He didn’t even know it was on at 3pm, like it is every year since I was a kid.
“People would be genuinely shocked if he did watch it so why not just admit it.”
Dickie Arbiter, a former Palace Press secretary, said of Mr Corbyn: “The head of state’s Christmas message is obviously not high on his list of priorities.”
He suggested that a Prime Minister would have cause to take more interest in what the Queen was saying but added: “The Queen doesn’t really care.
“What politicians do when they are in opposition and what
they do when in power are often miles apart.
Royal biographer Phil Dampier said: “I’d suggest that Jeremy Corbyn watches the Queen’s speech because he might learn something.
“I remember in the 1980s that one of her themes was going green and about the need to save the planet, decades before our current concerns.”
Mr Corbyn’s new description of Christmas Day varies wildly from last year when he claimed in an interview that he likes to sit down and watch a soap.
“We’ll watch some TV,” he then said. “The EastEnders Christmas special is always pretty good. I’m on an eternal search to find someone totally good – and Dot’s about as near as you can get. I like Dot.”
He also explained how Christmas Eve is the real big festive day in the Corbyn household.
His wife Laura is from Mexico, where December 24 is seen as the priority rather than Christmas Day – so the couple tend to follow that.
The new ITV interview comes hard on the heels of Mr Corbyn’s humiliation during an interview with the BBC’s Andrew Neil last week. In it he refused four times to apologise for anti-Semitism in his party.
And his woes continued yesterday when Labour’s bible, the New Statesman magazine, refused to endorse him, branding him “unfit to be prime minister”. The Leftwing
publication has been required reading for the Labour Party for decades but it published an election editorial in which it said the Labour leader’s “reluctance to apologise” for his handling of the party’s anti-Semitism crisis and his approach to Brexit meant he should not be put into Number 10.
Paradise
The magazine’s devastating leader column represents a massive blow to Mr Corbyn’s hopes of reinvigorating Labour’s ailing campaign. The election on December 12 is now just seven days away.
The party has trailed the Tories in every opinion poll published since the ballot was called, with the latest YouGov survey giving the Conservatives a nine-point lead.
Liz Truss, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, remarked there is “trouble in socialist paradise”, adding: “Even the New Statesman can’t stomach Corbyn.”
AS EACH DAY of the election passes, Jeremy Corbyn manages to find new levels of awfulness. Just when you think he cannot get any worse, he somehow achieves the impossible.
Yesterday’s astonishing episode on the ITV interview where he “fibbed” about watching the Queen’s broadcast on Christmas Day was just more evidence about why he must not be allowed the keys to Downing Street.
If somebody cannot tell the truth on small things, then how can we trust them on the big issues? And, of course, with Mr Corbyn we cannot.All we can trust him on is to do the wrong thing whether it is his weird Corbyn-neutral policy on Brexit, which is a cover to betray the Leave vote, or his plans to bankrupt the nation or his friendship with terrorists and this country’s enemies.
The crassness of his bumbling answer about watching the Queen’s address was that we all know he is a Republican and dislikes the monarchy intensely. Telling the truth would not have harmed him further. This was a man who after all could not bring himself to sing the national anthem.
While the monarchy’s reputation has been tarnished from Prince Andrew’s friendship with a convicted paedophile, the Queen herself is beyond reproach and much loved in this nation, unlike Mr Corbyn.
And if you are going to bend the truth, at least get the facts right. Most people know the address by the Queen is at 3pm on Christmas Day. But not Mr Corbyn.
Accusations over the truthfulness of our leaders have dogged this election campaign. The Prime Minister has been subjected to the worst of these taunts.The British electorate deserve better and simply want to know the truth not the fiction. If you really don’t watch the Queen’s Speech on Christmas Day, even if you are the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, then just have the confidence in your own beliefs and the respect of the voters to say so.