SAY NO TO THE CORBYN NIGHTMARE
Johnson’s bleak warning as two leaders clash in last TV debate before election
BORIS Johnson warned that Jeremy Corbyn would ‘take the country back decades’ last night.
In the final TV debate of the campaign, the Prime Minister urged voters to avoid the ‘nightmare’ of the Labour leader and Nicola Sturgeon taking power. And he rounded on Mr Corbyn for a ‘failure of leadership’ after he refused to say if he wanted to leave the EU or remain in it.
Mr Johnson also raised the issue of Mr Corbyn’s longstanding support for Irish nationalism.
He said: ‘I do find it slightly curious, to say the least, to be lectured about the Union between Great Britain and Northern Ireland by a man who all his political life has campaigned to break up that Union and actually supported for four decades the IRA and their campaign violently to destroy it.’
Mr Johnson said ‘the only possible alternative’ to a Tory majority was ‘another hung parliament with Jeremy Corbyn and Nicola Sturgeon’. He warned the pair were plotting ‘an economic agenda that would take this country back decades and two referendums – one on Scotland and a second toxic and divisive referendum on the EU’. He said: ‘Let’s give that nightmare a miss. Let’s end the chaos, the deadlock.’
A snap YouGov poll last night suggested voters thought the PM had won the debate, screened on the BBC, by a margin of 52:48. The verdict is a blow to Labour, which desperately needed a ‘game-changing’ moment to turn around the party’s flagging electoral fortunes.
Mr Johnson questioned how Labour could negotiate a new withdrawal agreement with the
EU when Mr Corbyn was ‘neutral’ and his frontbenchers are pro-Remain.
The Prime Minister said: ‘ How can you get a deal, a new deal from Brussels for Brexit, if you don’t actually believe in it? That’s the mystery that I fail to understand.’
Mr Corbyn ducked questions about whether Labour could guarantee Brexit would finally happen, only saying the party would ‘bring the debate to an end’.
The Labour leader, who was under intense pressure to land a blow on Mr Johnson, tried to hit back over Brexit.
He brandished a leaked Treasury report which he said undermined the Government’s claims that the new Brexit deal will not lead to checks on trade between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Mr Johnson insisted the claim was ‘not true’. During a debate on the economy, Mr Corbyn appeared to backtrack on a key Labour pledge, saying his plan to introduce a four- day week would not apply to the NHS – despite previous assurances from Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell that it would. Mr Johnson said the plan would undermine the NHS, forcing Mr Corbyn to say: ‘There is no plan to bring in a four-day week in
the NHS.’ Mr Corbyn also came under pressure over security and was forced to declare: ‘There are no plans whatsoever to disband MI5.’ Mr Johnson brushed aside questions of trust, saying that any politician caught lying should be forced to ‘made to go on their knees’ through the Commons chamber.
Mr Corbyn faced intense questioning over his failure to handle Labour’s anti-Semitism crisis, with host Nick Robinson asking why the Chief Rabbi had felt it necessary to warn British Jews feared a Corbyn government.
He said anti-Semitism was ‘wrong and totally unacceptable’. But he appeared to mix up the history of the Holocaust, saying ‘the awful treatment of the Jewish people in the 19th century in Germany indicates exactly what that kind of language and that kind of racism leads us to’. Mr Johnson, who insisted that Tories guilty of Islamophobia would be ‘out on the first bounce’, said Mr Corbyn was well-intentioned but had failed to act. ‘His unwillingness to take a stand, to stand up for the Jewish people in the Labour party, his unwillingness to protect them and put an arm round them is in my view a failure of leadership.’
Mr Robinson put to Mr Corbyn that one way to take hate out of society is to find a solution to Brexit. Mr Corbyn replied: ‘Of course there has to be a solution to it.’ Mr Johnson responded: ‘What’s your solution to it?’ to laughter from the audience.
Mr Corbyn spoke up for socialism, saying it would always ensure that ‘no one is left behind.’ He said Labour was ‘ambitious for our country and ambitious for you’, adding that a vote for Labour was ‘a vote for hope and real change’.
Both men were asked whether they were willing to put public safety ahead of human rights. Mr Corbyn said it was not an ‘either/ or’ question and all prisoners would eventually be released. Mr Johnson said: ‘We won’t be compromising people’s human rights, but we must put public safety first.’
In a letter to Mr Corbyn ahead of the debate, the Prime Minister challenged him to abandon his plan to enfranchise more than two million EU nationals in any second referendum – describing it as a ‘sly’ attempt to ‘fiddle’ the result.