Tory ‘disarray’ over Europe puts Labour on alert for election within six months

THERESA MAY could be gone from office within six months, Labour’s election chief has said as he revealed the party is preparing secretly for another snap election.

In an interview with this newspaper, Andrew Gwynne claimed the Conservatives were so split on Brexit that the Government faces collapse when hard decisions are made.

He said that Labour had begun a drive to find candidates for around 75 marginal seats in England. Money from the party’s 600,000 members is being funnelled into an election fund and the shadow cabinet will soon tour key Tory seats. Labour is also planning votes in Parliament on pensions and tuition fees to tempt Tory MPs to rebel.

The comments, which mark the most detailed account of how Labour is gearing up for another election, come on the eve of the party’s annual conference in Brighton. Jeremy Corbyn enters his third conference as leader more stable than ever after outperforming critics at the June election, when Labour took 30 more seats than in 2015. He kept the party on an election footing and contin- It was the most amusing political battle of the election – Boris Johnson and Andrew Gwynne jostling each other and cursing on live television.

Now the Labour MP has revealed what he thinks lay behind their exchanges: class. “Boris doesn’t like anybody challenging his very barmy views on the world, particularly somebody who doesn’t come from the same

ues to hope the Conservatives’ instability could lead to a collapse.

Mr Gwynne, Labour’s joint national campaign and election coordinator, was in the bunker for the last vote and is driving preparations for another one. “It could fall in six months,” he said. “Who knows what the Tory reaction is going to be on a Brexit divorce bill, or if there isn’t progress and they push against Theresa May. It is very hard for the Tories to change their leader in a minority government without going back to the country.”

Mr Gwynne, the MP for Denton and background as him,” said Mr Gwynne. “I went to Egerton Park, which was a comprehensive school in Denton [Greater Manchester]. It very much was the battle of Egerton Park versus Eton.”

Reddish who honed his electioneering by running a series of by-election campaigns, has been cheered by the open Tory warfare of the past week. He sees the party’s failure to keep a united front on Brexit as an asset for Labour.

“It’s quite clear that the Tories are in complete disarray over the issue of Europe,” Mr Gwynne said. “What David Cameron had successfully managed to do was paper over the cracks that had been there since the Nineties. What we’re seeing now is a re-emergence of those gaping wounds. You’ve got two sides that mentally cannot reconcile themselves.

“The political problem is that whatever they come back with from Brussels, there is a group of Tory MPs for whom it’s too hard and a similar group who will see it as complete capitulation to the EU.” It a problem that Mr Gwynne and Ian Lavery, his co-elections chief, are only too happy to exploit as Brexit talks intensify.

Last week, Labour’s National Executive Committee approved the selection of some 75 candidates in target English seats held by the Tories. They want the selections, around two-thirds of which will be women, to be complete within six months so the prospective MPs can build momentum on the ground.

On policy, shadow cabinet ministers – including Mr Gwynne, who has the communities and local government brief – are being urged to “put meat on the bones” of the manifesto.

Anti-austerity policies that struck a chord with younger voters are being developed further, while Mr Gwynne admits that more needs to be done to win the trust of older generations. It is a case of watching and waiting. “We will be prepared if and when this government falls,” he said.

‘You’ve got two sides that mentally cannot reconcile themselves’