Corbyn claim he can win election is ‘just bluster’

JEREMY CORBYN has been mocked for his “fanciful” claim that he could beat Boris Johnson in an election, despite a 10 per cent surge in the polls for the new Prime Minister.

Paul Scully, the Tory party’s new deputy chairman, made the comments after the Labour leader said he was “not in the slightest” bit worried at the prospect of fighting Mr Johnson in an election.

It comes as Mr Corbyn admitted the Left had a blind spot when it comes to anti-semitism.

Mr Scully, who was appointed to his new role at the weekend, accused the Labour leader of “bluster” after a new poll put the Conservatives on 30 per cent, up from 20 per cent in a poll earlier this summer.

It turned a six-point lead for Mr Corbyn over Theresa May into a five-point advantage for Mr Johnson.

The support appears to have come from Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, which saw a 10 point fall in the polling.

“I’d be surprised if in his heart he was fancying a general election anytime soon,” Mr Scully said. “For all his bluster I don’t think his back bench want a general election or are keen on a general election. The country doesn’t want an election. We just need to get on with Brexit.”

He added that he believed all Mr Corbyn “ever wanted throughout the Brexit process is power, rather than sorting our Brexit itself ”.

“I don’t believe the party and his colleagues will be as ready and up for it,” he said.

“I think a lot of his colleagues on the back benches have seen the results of the European elections and they’ll see the way the polls are and think the fact that a general election is going to whisk him in and be able to sort out Brexit and the country is fanciful.”

Yesterday, Mr Corbyn was forced to revisit the anti-semitism allegations against the Labour Party in a recent BBC Panorama documentary.

Asked about it on Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday, he said: “People in politics do sometimes cross the line, confuse issues and can dip into anti-semitic tropes and language”.

Mr Corbyn said he was “upset” about the allegations and in a bid to combat the issue referenced the education programme he introduced last week, along with “a substantial pack of education materials which has been sent out”.

“I say to people, just be careful on your use of language,” Mr Corbyn said.

“It’s not acceptable. Look at the history of racism in this continent over the last century and look now at the rise of the far-right in central Europe, and indeed in Western Europe and again in the United States as well.”