What’s happening?
It’s Labour’s official campaign launch today, and Jeremy Corbyn heads to Manchester for the “real fight starts now” moment, with a message that it’s all to play for over the next four weeks.
With some exceptions.
Corbyn will tell supporters – including newly installed Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham – that Brexit isn’t on the list:
This election isn’t about Brexit itself. That issue has been settled. The question now is what sort of Brexit do we want – and what sort of country do we want Britain to be after Brexit?
Corbyn’s plan comes with promises on economic fairness, council house building and rental reform – and a vow that, whatever the picture on 9 June, he’ll be the leader of the Labour party. In an interview with BuzzFeed, he said he’d be “carrying on” regardless of the result:
I was elected leader of this party and I’ll stay leader of this party.
If he wins, he told the Guardian, Brexit won’t be the only thing to remain non-negotiable:
I’m an incorrigible runner, cyclist and allotment gardener. Balancing life is important.
And would he relish the move to No 10?
I’m very happy in the house I’ve got, so let’s work it out when we get there.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Conservatives seems rather less keen to hang on to the label. She prefers Theresa May’s Team. She’s also developed a liking for Ed Miliband’s policy to cap energy bills, if her policy to cap energy bills is any clue.
Back in 2013, many on the right thought Miliband’s plan was a terribly bad idea. David Cameron trumpeted it as proof the then Labour leader was in pursuit of a “Marxist universe”. “The lights will go out over Britain,” flustered the Daily Mail. No such fears for your EU-unfriendly incandescent lightbulbs this time round. Now capping energy bills is a terribly good idea, according to Theresa May’s Team.
Not a terribly good idea is to exhort people to vote for “stability” if you’re not trying to encourage people to vote for the party whose slogan is all about stability. Justin Welby, the archbishop of Canterbury, has had to clarify that a letter he and John Sentamu, the archbishop of York, sent to all parishes ahead of the election was not an endorsement of the Conservative party. Welby told the Guardian:
Was the letter a shift to the right? Absolutely not.
At a glance:
- Caroline Lucas joins Green party’s bid to snatch Isle of Wight seat.
- In an informal “progressive alliance”, the Greens won’t stand against the SNP’s Angus Robertson in Moray, the National reports.
- May and Corbyn to appear on BBC Question Time special (but not together).
-
Simon Danczuk could stand against Labour after quitting party.
- Facebook employs ex-political aides to help campaigns target voters.
- Iain Duncan Smith rap-battles Diane Abbott and nobody knows why and perhaps it’s better that way.
Poll position
Yesterday’s Guardian/ICM poll was a record-breaker: the largest vote-share ever for the Conservatives in a Guardian/ICM poll, and the biggest Tory v Labour lead in ICM’s history: 22 points.
- Conservatives: 49% (+2 since last week)
- Labour: 27% (-1)
- Lib Dems: 9% (+1)
- Ukip: 6% (-2)
- Greens: 3% (-1)
For those who think – rightly – that relying on one poll is a bit wobbly, let our new poll tracker put it into context for you. For those who think that all polling is a bit wobbly, our home affairs editor Alan Travis has analysed the caveats. This is quite a big one:
It should be borne in mind that when British pollsters do get it wrong, it has tended to be an underestimate of the Tory vote and an overestimate of the Labour vote, so a policy of ignoring the polls is unlikely to provide much comfort for Jeremy Corbyn.
Diary
- The Greens continue their Isle of Wight campaign, with Caroline Lucas launching a health policy in Newport at 9.30am.
- At 11am Jeremy Corbyn is in Manchester for the official launch of Labour’s election campaign. There will be a battle bus.
- Expect to see the Lib Dems’ bus if you’re in Penzance: Tim Farron is there for a public Q&A with the readers of Cornwall Live, a rather friendlier hobnob than the news website experienced with the PM last week.
- Theresa May is in Yorkshire, before hotfooting it to the BBC’s One Show sofa for an interview alongside her husband, Philip May; that’s at 7pm.
Talking point
The Conservatives are keen to make the win for Emmanuel Macron in France part of their push for votes, and last night rolled out an email from Boris Johnson that they might as well have sent straight to the fact-checkers:
Yesterday a new French president claimed a strong negotiating position on Brexit as a result of his election win.
It is critical that we have someone of the calibre and strength of Theresa May with an equally strong position and an equally strong mandate to protect Britain in Brexit…
As our country prepares to enter talks with the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of the European Union, now more than ever we need strong and stable leadership.
It’s true that Macron is no fan of Brexit, which he’s described as a “crime”. It’s not true – unless he said it very, very quietly and perhaps only to Boris Johnson – that he “claimed a strong negotiating position on Brexit as a result of his election win” (voilá); his chief economic adviser, Jean Pisani-Ferry, said yesterday the new president had no interest in punishing Britain (though he’s probably not minded to make it easy, either). It’s not even clear if the PM and her team will be negotiating with anyone other than Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator. It’s unlikely that May will win 66.1% of the vote.
It is, however, true that the “they’re all out to get us” line is a highly effective one:
On who would you trust to negotiate the best Brexit deal for Britain:
— Britain Elects (@britainelects) May 8, 2017
T. May: 62%
J. Corbyn: 20%
(via @Survation)
Read these
Vincent Boland in the Financial Times looks at the very particular role Brexit is playing in Northern Ireland campaigning:
The DUP was the only party in Northern Ireland to support Brexit in the run-up to last year’s EU referendum. But now senior party figures are conceding that Brexit will pose challenges for Northern Ireland that the party may have previously underestimated…
Sinn Féin has adopted a fiercely anti-Brexit stance since last year’s referendum. In recent weeks, the nationalist party has appealed to the 56% of Northern Irish voters who voted Remain by demanding a ‘special designated status’ for Northern Ireland within the EU.
In the Times, Rachel Sylvester says the centrists in the Labour party need to draw courage from Macron’s win:
Of course, the French presidential electoral system is different to the British one; it would be harder for a new party to break through here than it was for a single candidate to come from nowhere to end up in the Élysée Palace – but the gap in the political market for a credible voice of the centre is exactly the same here as it was in France…
Critics of a new party always cite the failure of the SDP as evidence that there is no point trying to break the mould, but politics is far more fractured and less tribal than it was in the 1980s. The few remaining traditional loyalties were severed by the EU referendum. Labour’s traditional base has all but disintegrated, with many white working-class voters switching allegiance to the Conservatives (often having gone through the Ukip gateway) and liberal metropolitans feeling alienated by Mr Corbyn. As one MP puts it, with brutal honesty: ‘Labour no longer has a core vote.’
And catch up with the Guardian’s new series, Voices and Votes, which sees six Guardian reporters embedded in constituencies across the country. First up: Hartlepool.
Revelation of the day
The Mirror reports that the Council of Hunting Associations sees a Conservative landslide as “the chance we have been waiting for” to reintroduce fox-hunting. They think a pledge to hold a free vote on the issue will find its way into the manifesto – as it did in 2010 and 2015, with as much success as the commitment to reduce net immigration to “tens of thousands”.
The day in a tweet
Today is the Holyrood Dog of the Year contest. It's hard to tell who's more excited, the dogs or journalists getting a break from elections pic.twitter.com/Olb2ckh82w
— Philip Sim (@BBCPhilipSim) May 8, 2017
You’ll want to know, of course, that it was a border collie called Maya, belonging to SNP MSP Emma Harper, who was crowned top dog.
And another thing
Would you like to wake up to this briefing in your inbox every weekday? Sign up here!
And one last thing
Unlike many news organisations, the Guardian hasn’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. Here’s how you can support it.
Comments are open on our live blog.
