Overheard on the doorstep

BBC’s Cenotaph gaffe

This Trump deal could send £500m NHS cash a week to big drugs firms

JEREMY CORBYN ON FARAGE’S ‘PACT’ WITH PM

QWHAT HAS NIGEL FARAGE ANNOUNCED?

A He pulled the Brexit Party out of all 317 seats that the Tories won in 2017. The party will fight just 300 on December 12 – all of them held by Labour or the Remain parties. Jubilant Tory Brexiteers welcomed the move and bookies slashed the odds of a Tory majority. But experts claim it would make little difference in non-Tory seats. WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE TORIES?

A

In theory, it is good news for Tory candidates fighting to keep their seats. They no longer need to worry about a Brexiteer rival splitting the vote. But it could backfire in marginals where more Tory than Labour votes could now go over to the Brexit Party. And it will also be a blow to Boris Johnson’s reputation among moderate Tory voters who could back off from supporting him after the all-but-formal pact.

QESTABLISHMENT lickspittle “Sir” Nigel Farage’s coveted knighthood will surely finally arrive from a grateful Boris Johnson.

The Thatcherite city slicker – a Tory for a decade before switching to UKIP then creating the Brexit Party – yearns for a Ruritanian title and is disappointed it wasn’t conferred after the 2016 referendum. The

QDOES IT HURT LABOUR’S CHANCES?

A It will be harder for Labour to win in the 317 Tory-held seats. But the impact on Labour-held seats is not so clear-cut. A study found 24% of the Brexit Party’s support in the May EU elections came from people who voted Labour in 2017. Some 64% were Tory voters. So in some close red-blue seats the Brexit Party could hurt the Tories more.

AND WHAT ABOUT NIGEL FARAGE?

A

He originally demanded Mr Johnson drop his Brexit plan or face 600 candidates. Yet he has backed down. The Brexit Party’s vote was already being squeezed, but it could now become irrelevant.

Qcharlatan, who advocated privatising the NHS, is wrestling Johnson to see who climbs furthest and fastest up Trump’s colon.

Labour’s fighting Johnson’s Tory Brexit Party and Farage’s Brexit Tory Party. Chump “Sir” Nigel’s simplified those battle lines. Voters see Boris Farage and Nigel Johnson are two cheeks on the same Tory backside.

THE BBC apologised for a “mistake” which led to film of Boris Johnson at the Cenotaph in 2016 being used in a BBC Breakfast piece about this year’s Remembrance service.

Mr Johnson was better groomed than on Sunday, when he looked dishevelled and laid a wreath upside down.

“He’s like a footballer who doesn’t have a position, just runs about doing mad sh**,” said a voter in Hartlepool on Nigel Farage’s decision not to contest a parliamentary seat.