The Spectator

On the eve of the US presidential election, experts at Princeton university decided that Donald Trump had a 1 per cent chance of being elected. Before the last general election, Populus, the opinion poll firm, gave David Cameron a 0.5 per cent chance of winning a majority. Much is made of the need to look at ‘the data’ when considering political arguments, but so often it is a wildly inaccurate guess with a decimal point at the end to give an aura of scientific specificity. So when we read that Jeremy Corbyn has just a 17 per cent chance of becoming prime minister, this does not mean that the election is in the bag. The Tories are still quite capable of blowing it. It’s understandable that voters have misgivings about Theresa May.

Did you see the TV debate last night?  I have to say I thought Jeremy was an impressive performer and a tough adversary.  Well-prepared.  On top of his brief.  Knew the policy inside out.  Persistent to the last, he never gave up.  Yes, Jeremy Paxman definitely still has it. The strange thing about general election campaigns is that you don’t often get to see your opponent close up.  But last night, I did.  I saw Jeremy Corbyn close up on television and what I saw was revealing. Despite being a Member of Parliament for 34 years, despite being the Leader of the Labour Party for the last two years, he’s simply not ready to govern – and not prepared to lead. He’s not prepared to use the nuclear deterrent.

AN: Paul Nuttall UKIP was established in 1993, it was to get the UK out of the European Union. You won the referendum, your side, last year. So instead of enduring this agonising decline in UKIP why not just declare victory and go home? PN: Well, we did win. As you said, we were set up back in the early ‘90s to get Britain out of the European Union. With the referendum we won the war, what we’ve got to do now is win the peace. The Prime Minister will start the negotiations with the European Union later in June, and UKIP has to be on the pitch, because if UKIP’s not on the pitch, then there’s no real impetus for the Prime Minister not to backslide, and I believe – I worry that she may backslide.

AN: Nicola Sturgeon the SNP has governed Scotland for ten years, so can we start by agreeing that the performance of Scottish public services is the responsibility of you and the SNP government? NS: I take responsibility for the performance of our public services, although Scotland’s overall budget of course is determined by decisions taken at Westminster and our budget has been reduced over the years since the Conservatives have been in office. AN: Let’s start then with Alex Salmond’s former head of policy Alex Bell, this is what he’s had to say. ‘The evidence shows that we, the SNP, haven’t closed the poverty gap, redistributed wealth, improved education of educated more poor people.

AN: Mr Corbyn, today you drew a link between terror attacks at home and British actions abroad. Do you believe if Britain had not followed the foreign policy it has since Tony Blair was in office the attack on Manchester would not have happened? JC: The attack on Manchester was shocking, appalling, indefensible, wrong in every possible way. The parallel I was drawing this morning was that a number of people ever since the interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn attention to the links with foreign policy, including Boris Johnson in 2005, two former heads of MI5, and of course the Foreign Affairs Select Committee. And the point I was making was we have to make our streets secure. We have to make our population secure.

AN: Prime Minister, you started this campaign with a huge double digit lead in the polls, it’s now down to single digits in some polls. What’s gone wrong? PM: Well, Andrew, there’s only one poll that counts in any election campaign, as I’m sure you know from your long experience, and that’s the one that takes place on the 8th June when people have actually cast their votes, where they’ve made that choice, which is a crucial choice. I think this genuinely is the most crucial election I’ve seen in my lifetime, because it’s about getting Brexit negotiations right, getting the right deal for Britain from Europe, and going beyond that, a plan for a stronger Britain for the future.