Jeremy corbyn

Labour is meeting today to finalise its manifesto. The only sticking point? A draft manifesto has already been leaked. The party’s plans to woo voters are splashed across the Daily Telegraph and the Mirror. They’ve also been leaked to the BBC. Make no mistake: this is a huge embarrassment for the party and does nothing to dispel the Tory attack line that Labour would be at the forefront of a coalition of chaos if it wins come June 9th. After all, if it can’t get its manifesto launch right, how can Labour be trusted to govern? So what does the manifesto say? There are few surprises. But for Corbyn’s supporters, this is a Christmas and birthday wishlist rolled into one. For those in the centre ground, there’s much less on offer to win their vote.

I didn’t see a ferret, reverse or otherwise, during Labour’s campaign launch or after. I heard some quite silly, grandstanding, questions from Laura Kuenssberg. And I heard a Labour leader who sounded a bit like…..well, a decent Labour leader. None of this is to deny the patent catastrophe of Corbyn’s leadership of the party hitherto, or to suggest that I agreed with everything he said. But he spoke from the heart, passionately, with a conviction I do not hear in Theresa May’s frankly automaton repetitiveness. And much of what Corbyn had to say about tax avoiders, inequalities and hardship will play very well with his core vote north of the Wash. I still wouldn’t vote for him and still less for his grim and sinister sidekick McDonnell.

Jeremy Corbyn said this morning that Brexit was ‘settled’. Now, it seems, he isn’t quite so sure. The Labour leader was quizzed repeatedly on whether the UK would definitely leave the EU behind if he becomes Prime Minister on June 9th. Seven times, Corbyn refused to answer. Instead, Corbyn insisted that he would ‘get a good deal from Europe’ - but wouldn't say what would happen if he didn't. Here’s what he told the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg: LK: ...My question is if you’re prime minister we will leave come hell or high water whatever is on the table at the end of the negotiations? JC: We win the election we’ll get the good deal with Europe.

The Tories have just hit a new high in the polls: 49 per cent, handing them a 22-point lead over Labour. This margin is virtually uncharted territory for the Conservatives, with ICM pointing out that the party’s current lead has only been bettered once in the last 34 years of polling - back in May 1983. As ever, it’s less good news for Labour: the party sits on 27 per cent, according to ICM - a number which precisely matches the share of the national vote they picked up in last week’s local elections. If - and it’s a big if - this means the pollsters have pinpointed Labour's share of the vote at 27 per cent, the outcome would be disastrous for the party come June 8th. Replicated nationally, the Tories would win a thumping majority of 172.

Labour's dismal showing so far in the local elections was predicted by many. However, the results still appear to have come as a nasty surprise to some former Corbyn cheerleaders. Step forward Caitlin Moran. The columnist has taken to social media to apologise publicly for backing the beleaguered Labour leader: Moran then went on to claim that she had done more research into what sports bra to choose than into Corbyn's policies: As Corbyn voters are now discovering, it's worth keeping abreast of who you support.

On this week’s episode, we look at the rebirth of the Scottish Conservatives, ask whether it’s helpful to call Marine Le Pen a fascist, and consider what the future holds for Britain’s opposition parties. First, in this week's magazine, Alex Massie profiles Ruth Davidson, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who has overseen an extraordinary regeneration for her party in the last two years. Are the Tories the Unionist force du jour in Scotland? And can they make significant gains off the SNP, in a country that has had a frosty relationship with their English siblings? Ruth joins the podcast to discuss their campaign, along with Fraser Nelson. As Alex Massie writes in his cover piece: "...

When my old friend – a lifelong Labour supporter – told me he was voting Tory at the election, I posted a message on Twitter: https://twitter.com/RevRichardColes/status/858296208477040640 That was that, I thought. But then the replies started piling in. One of the first responses came from someone who thought my friend would regret his decision if he ever needed the NHS. ‘He’s an NHS consultant’, I replied. Even that didn’t stop the disbelief: many of those responding struggled to believe that someone working for the NHS could possibly vote Conservative. Was my friend real, they demanded to know. Admittedly not everyone thought I was making it up.

I awoke this morning to hear Diane Abbott’s brains leaking out of her ears and all over the carpet during an interview with LBC’s excellent Nick Ferrari. You will need a mop and a bucket very sharpish, I thought to myself, as she gabbled on, the hole beneath her feet growing ­larger with every syllable she uttered. Diane has had the brain leakage problem before, many times, and my worry is that following the LBC debacle there is almost nothing left inside her skull at all, just a thin ­greyish residue resembling a particular kind of fungi or leaf mould. This would leave Diane on an intellectual par with Emily ­Thornberry, a disaster for Labour. Later Diane explained that she had ‘misspoken’ ­during the interview — but how were we to know?

Almost two weeks in, and before the short campaign has even started, people are starting to wise up to Theresa May's conjuring trick. Last week, Philip Collins of the Times tweeted 'I am usually a strong defender of politics but this empty, choreographed, stale, boring Tory campaign essentially implies we are all idiots' (which was retweeted four and a half thousand times). This was then followed up by a performance on Marr that Fraser Nelson judged to have 'perfected the art of saying nothing'. At the same time, people are still picking holes in the Labour effort. On Thursday, a video emerged of Jeremy Corbyn heading to address a crowd, before he was spun around by a lackey in order to face the gathered cameras.

This election was won two days before it was announced, on Easter Sunday. Theresa May put out an Easter message in which she suggested that British values had a Christian basis. It was her version of David Cameron’s message two years before, in which he said that Britain is a Christian country. She was rather more convincing. I don’t know whether Cameron is sincerely religious, but he didn’t seem it. He didn’t even seem to try very hard to seem it, as if fearing that his metropolitan support might weaken, and perhaps that George Osborne would make a snarky jibe about it at cabinet. But it still did him good to make those pro-religious noises. St Theresa should keep her piety out of politics, said a few pundits.