What’s happening?
After Labour’s manifesto detonated earlier than planned, Jeremy Corbyn today takes the fight to foreign policy. He’ll tell an audience at Chatham House that he’s “not a pacifist” – but instead wants a resurrection of the ethical foreign policy championed by the late Robin Cook. What that means, says shadow foreign secretary Emily Thornberry, writing in the Guardian, is an end to arms sales to Saudi Arabia, a review of contracts with Bahrain and other repressive regimes, and no unilateral action against Syria.
What it’ll also mean is the special relationship becoming a bit less special. In his speech this morning, Corbyn will distance himself from the US president (with a dig at the solicitousness of Theresa May on her White House visit):
Pandering to an erratic Trump administration will not deliver stability … So no more hand-holding with Donald Trump; a Labour government will conduct a robust and independent foreign policy made in London.
Also made in London: the finishing touches to that leaked manifesto, confirmed by Labour’s clause V meeting yesterday. Also confirmed: shadow cabinet member Barry Gardiner told BBC Newsnight that Labour did accept that free movement of people would end when the UK handed in its EU membership card – a detail missing from the leaked draft.
Reaction to the manifesto has been not so much mixed as centrifugally polarised. Corbyn calls it a set of policies to “transform the lives” of many Britons. The Guardian calls it a bold step. Paul Johnson, director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, calls it “the state getting deeply involved in much more of the private sector than it has been … perhaps since the 1940s”. The Daily Mail and the Telegraph call it a cost “to every family” of £4,000 – though, once you wade through their questions over Labour’s costings, they are curiously reluctant to show their own workings. Both put the manifesto spending commitments at £93bn; John McDonnell tots it up as £55bn.
But why not see for yourselves? Here are the key policies analysed. Or read it in full here.
Meanwhile, the PM takes her strong and stable pitch to South Shields, where she’ll bring the Conservatives’ battlebus out of hibernation and also try out a new alliteration as she appeals to “proud and patriotic working-class people”. Apparently stung by accusations that she had avoided meeting “ordinary” voters – which arose after she repeatedly avoided meeting ordinary voters – May has upped her ordinary voter quota.
Yesterday the PM submitted to an LBC radio phone-in, during which she defended health secretary Jeremy Hunt from an NHS doctor who said she was considering resigning “because things have got so bad”. May also had a chance to practise her wordplay in an answer on tax:
We have no plans to increase the level of tax but what I’m saying is that’s because we are party that believes in a low tax … As a government, we would go into government with no plans to raise the level of tax.
Oh, and if Trump came to dinner, she’d cook him a slow-roast shoulder of lamb. Another key policy distinction between the two prime ministerial contenders.
At a glance:
- Scottish Labour will pledge to raise income tax rates by 1p for everyone earning above £21,500; while the SNP says it may introduce a 50p top rate.
- Ghost of PMs past: Gordon Brown didn’t mention Corbyn in his campaign speech; David Cameron said May needed a big mandate to escape being manoeuvred into an “extreme Brexit”.
- Lib Dems and Labour pledge to double length of paid paternity leave.
- Police car carrying Corbyn runs over foot of BBC camera operator.
- Paul Nuttall stands by Ukip MEP who called Islam a death cult.
Poll position
A Comres poll for the Daily Mirror shows several of the policies in Labour’s leaked manifesto hit the right (left?) spot for voters. A majority supported nationalising energy companies (49% v 24% opposed); railways (52% v 22%); and Royal Mail (50% v 25%). A ban on zero-hours contracts won 71% for and 16% against. Some 65% (v 24%) backed raising income tax on those earning over £80,000. And 78% favour retaining the ban on foxhunting.
But, in the same poll, when asked which party has “more realistic and well thought through policies”?
Labour 31%.
Conservatives 51%.
Diary
- At 11am Nicola Sturgeon gives a speech at the National Economic Forum in Inverness. Kezia Dugdale is in Stornoway; Patrick Harvie, Scottish Greens co-convenor, in Glasgow; and Scottish Lib Dem leader Willie Rennie in Fife.
- At 11.30 Jeremy Corbyn makes his foreign policy speech at Chatham House.
- At 11.45 John McDonnell speaks at the Fire Brigades Union conference in Blackpool.
- This afternoon, Theresa May ding-dings the Tory battle bus launch in northeast England.
- At 1.30pm, Chuka Umunna will be in Westminster for the Vote Leave Watch event to discuss Labour opposition to a hard Brexit.
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Tony Blair and EU negotiator Michel Barnier also talk Brexit in Ireland.
- And the two-day Convention on Brexit convenes in London, with keynote speakers including Gina Miller, Ian McEwan, Caroline Criado-Perez … and Jarvis Cocker. (Saturday headliners are Nick Clegg and Michael Gove.)
Read these
Ignore the “blue rinse rising” condescension, and this Economist analysis has some striking figures on older voters:
Fortunately for Theresa May … her retirement-age base currently looks rock-solid. Before the Brexit referendum last year, around a fifth of over-60s supported the UK Independence party. But after the surprise vote to leave the EU stripped Ukip of much of its reason for being, nearly three-quarters of that group have abandoned the party, with the vast majority shifting their allegiances to the Conservatives. As a result, the Tories are currently some 50 points ahead of Labour among the old – an advantage roughly double the size of their already-large margin with that group in 2015. Labour may have chosen a relatively aged leader in the 67-year-old Jeremy Corbyn, but the polls suggest he shouldn’t count on his sexagenarian peers for any help.
Rachel Shabi, in the Independent, says Labour’s manifesto is proof that populism isn’t the preserve of the right:
Rather than seeking to accommodate a negative mood over migration (which invariably ends up confirming the far-right’s framing), left populism tries to persuade even those who disagree over ‘cultural issues’ of a common political cause.
There’s another fundamental distinction too: the populist left in the UK, as elsewhere, casts decades of ravaging neoliberalism as the source of both economic hardship and public despair with politics; in this context, centrism’s tinkering around the edges while subscribing to the same economic playbook isn’t going to cut it – and also perpetuates the feeling often heard on doorsteps that, whoever you vote for, nothing changes.
Revelation of the day
To regain her seat in Maidenhead, May will have to see off 12 other would-be MPs, including the Official Monster Raving Loony party’s Howling Laud Hope, Ukip’s Gerard Batten, and the enigmatic Lord Buckethead. It’s unclear if this is the same Lord Buckethead who won 131 votes in the 1987 general election in Finchley against Margaret Thatcher (she won more). Elsewhere, Mr Fishfinger will stand against Tim Farron in Westmorland and Lonsdale. In Islington North, Corbyn faces nine challengers, including one from the Communist League.
Jack Monroe has abandoned her bid to become an MP in Southend West. The Greens have stepped aside in 22 seats, in favour of Labour in Hastings and Rye (held by home secretary Amber Rudd), in Chester and in Eltham, where Labour incumbent Clive Efford has reportedly pledged to “oppose a harmful Brexit”. Brexit is also among the reasons Ukip has decided not to contest hundreds of seats where pro-leave Tories are standing. Another reason is that party officials weren’t sure if would-be candidates had submitted their nomination papers before yesterday’s 4pm deadline.
The day in a tweet
When manifesto announcements go wrong – this time in 2001, when Labour’s then election coordinator Douglas Alexander was handed a note:
(13/17)The pictures on Sky News showed the egging incident. This was not the broadcast coverage we'd anticipated on manifesto day...
— Douglas Alexander (@D_G_Alexander) May 11, 2017
And another thing
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