Friday, 29 Mar 2024

General election: PM seeks to move past Tory setbacks with attack on Corbyn ‘horror show’

Boris Johnson has warned of a “horror show” if Jeremy Corbyn replaces him as prime minister, as he looked to move past early setbacks to the Conservatives’ general election campaign.

After visiting the Queen at Buckingham Palace this morning – to fire the starting gun on the official election campaign – Mr Johnson spoke in Downing Street ahead of the 12 December poll.

Repeating his vow to “get Brexit done”, the prime minister claimed the “alternative” to a Tory victory next month was for the UK to “spend the whole of 2020 in a horror show of yet more dither and delay”.

“Imagine waking up on Friday 13 December and finding Corbyn at the head of his technicolour yawn of a coalition,” he added.

“And they would spend the whole of 2020 having two referendums.

“One on Scotland – because he has done a deal with the Scots nationalists to assist the break up of the Union if they sustain him in power.

“And another referendum on Brexit, which is meant to happen in nine months’ time after he has renegotiated supposedly our exit and renegotiated this deal.”

By contrast, Mr Johnson promised to take the UK out of the EU in January if voters back the Conservatives at the polls.

However, the prime minister has endured a bumpy start to the election campaign. It follows:

  • Welsh Secretary Alun Cairns quit Mr Johnson’s government following reports he had prior knowledge of a collapsed rape trial, despite saying he was unaware of the details.
  • Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn seized on “shameful” comments by senior Tories about the Grenfell Tower fire, for which they were forced to apologise.
  • The Tories faced questions about a party campaign video that critics claim had been “doctored”.
  • Former Tory minister Ed Vaizey announced he won’t be standing at the election, despite Mr Johnson handing him the Conservative whip back last week.

During his speech in Downing Street, Mr Johnson claimed to have been left “wanting to chew my own tie in frustration” at his failure to meet his “do or die” pledge to take the UK out of the EU on 31 October.

“We have got a deal, oven-ready, by which we can leave the EU in just a few weeks,” he said, adding: “So it has been frankly mind-boggling in the last few weeks to see how parliament first voted to approve this deal and then voted for delay.

“I am afraid that it is clear that if parliament had its way then this country would not be leaving even on January 31 and that is of course bad for democracy, it’s disastrous for trust in politics.

“Why should MPs decide that they can cancel the result of the referendum?”

In a further attack on Mr Corbyn, the prime minister accused Labour of having “sided” with Russian President Vladimir Putin over the Salisbury chemical weapons attack.

It follows his comparison of the Labour leader with the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin, over his “hatred” of wealth creators.

Mr Johnson will formally launch the Conservative election campaign at a rally in the West Midlands on Wednesday evening.

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