BoJo and Jez both fear a kick in ballots
It’s the recurring nightmare that has Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson waking in a cold sweat at night. Not in the same bed I hasten to add. In these uncertain times such things need making clear.
They’re secretly terrified they really will be facing each other in a December General Election.
In public they are both committed to one at the earliest opportunity. Privately they’d apparently rather gnaw off their kneecaps.
That was the message I was given time and again at their conferences in Brighton and Manchester.
An election in the dank, dark, depths of winter means a low turnout for Labour.
And the Tories don’t have the £25million they need to fight it after spending a shedload on the last one only two years ago.
For Corbyn it means accepting in principle the proposal by his rebel wing to troop to the polls for a second EU referendum before marching to the ballot box for a change of government.
For Johnson it means abandoning his do or die pledge to leave the EU by October 31, and accepting an extension until the end of January.
Personally I would have thought that leaves the PM in the ditch he said he would rather be found dead in than delay Brexit.
He would have failed to deliver what his entire premiership is built on – skedaddling out of the EU by the end of next month.
But senior Tories whispered in my ear that he would be forgiven if he was forced into postponement, as long as they were satisfied he had done everything possible to avoid it. The “two- state solution” he is proposing to the EU must be a try- on. Johnson has Israel and Palestine as models for what 45 years of failure looks like.
Curiously, the DUP likes it. Though it beats me why, given that it proposes to set up a different regulatory regime between Northern Ireland and the mainland, which they always ferociously opposed. Perhaps there is another £1billion bung in it for them.
But extension might give Corbyn the fig leaf he needs to argue we must now wait until next year to ensure no-deal is off the table.
Were I of a cynical disposition I might suspect this was a plot orchestrated by No10 to pull the wool over my eyes. It wouldn’t be the first time.
But the Tories I’ve been speaking to were encountered randomly and have no connection to one another.
Even that semi- housetrained polecat Dominic Cummings would struggle to pull off a disinformation op like that.
Anyway, it would be a crime to have an election before it’s necessary. So don’t have nightmares.
Talk about worst case no-deal scenarios. Plaid Cymru MP Jonathan Edwards last week asked Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay: “How many bodybags have been stockpiled for use in Wales as part of contingency planning for the UK leaving the EU without a withdrawal agreement?” The MP was told that’s a devolved matter!