Labour voters in the north and Midlands ‘can’t stand’ Jeremy Corbyn and he could cost the party an election victory, a member of his own top team has said.
Shadow health secretary Jon Ashworth was recorded telling a Conservative friend that the opposition leader was proving a problem on the doorstep in the party’s traditional heartlands.
In stunning comments he tried to dismiss as a ‘joke’ today, Mr Ashworth said that the leader’s tortured neutrality on Brexit was proving divisive in working class, Leave-supporting areas.
He said that many people would switch to vote Tory and in enough numbers to ensure Boris Johnson won a majority.
His remarks, which have been seized upon by Labour’s political opponents, are sure to cause huge damage to Labour just days from the election.
Boris Johnson led criticism, saying: ‘Jonathan Ashworth is saying what hundreds of Labour candidates and millions of voters are thinking.
‘Jeremy Corbyn is unfit to be PM because he is blocking Brexit.’
In the recording obtained by the Guido Fawkes blog the Labour candidate for Leicester South is heard saying said the civil service machine would ‘pretty quickly move to safeguard security’ if Mr Corbyn entered Number 10.
He is heard saying: ‘Outside of the city seats, if you are in small-town Midlands and North, it’s abysmal out there.
‘They don’t like Johnson but they can’t stand Corbyn and they think Labour’s blocked Brexit.
‘I don’t think they are long-term gains for the Tory Party but I can see them going Tory this election and if Labour ever got its act together they presumably would fall back.
‘I think middle-class graduates – Remainy people – Labour’s probably doing well among… but not in big enough numbers to deny the Tories a majority.’
Confronted with his remarks by the BBC today, Mr Ashworth said it was ‘banter’ with a Tory friend
Mr Corbyn was campaigning in Nelson in Nelson, Lancashire today when the recording came to light
Mr Ashworth, right, with Jeremy Corbyn on a visit to a hospital in Nuneaton last month to highlight the NHS as an election focal point
And he said party MPs ‘f***ed it up’ in 2016 in their attempt to remove the Labour leader, saying they ‘went too early’.
Mr Ashworth’s remarks echo what Labour sources have told MailOnline regarding Mr Corbyn’s unpopularity with voters.
Confronted with his remarks by the BBC today, Mr Ashworth said it was ‘banter’ with a friend.
He said: ‘We are having banter with each other. We are joking around. No I don’t mean it, because I’m joking around with my mate because he is a Tory and he is saying things
‘If you leak it to Guido Fawkes of course it makes me look like a right plonker.
‘But it is not what I mean when I’m winding up a friend, trying to sort of … pull his leg a bit.’
Mr Ashworth claimed the recording was leaked by Tory activist Greig Baker, former chairman of Canterbury Conservative Association.
‘It’s a shame because I thought he was a friend – he’s clearly not a friend.’
The Conservatives have highlighted the Labour leader’s opposition to Trident nuclear missiles and historic opposition to Nato during the election campaign.
He is a former chairman of the anti-West Stop The War Coalition.
Asked if he thought Mr Corbyn was a threat to national security, Mr Ashworth replied: ‘No, of course I don’t…
‘I’m joshing around with somebody who I thought was an old friend, who has now leaked it to Guido Fawkes, an old friend who I’ve known for many years.
‘He’s a Tory and we’ve always had a bit of banter together… I’m winding him up, I’m teasing him, he’s been winding me up saying everyone ”oh at CCHQ thinks it’s going to be really close, Corbyn’s going to win” and all this sort of stuff.’
Last month a poll found that less than a quarter of British voters like Mr Corbyn, in a fresh blow to the Labour leader’s hopes of winning the general election.
Some 44 per cent of people who took part in an Ipsos MORI survey said they like Boris Johnson.
But just 23 per cent said the same of Mr Corbyn. That number ranks as the lowest likeability rating for a Tory or Labour leader recorded by the polling company since 2007.
It is worse than the 29 per cent rating for Gordon Brown in 2008 – the year the UK went into economic meltdown – and the 30 per cent recorded by Ed Miliband in 2015.
Conservative Party chairman James Cleverly said: ‘This is an honest and truly devastating assessment of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership by one of his most trusted election lieutenants.
‘He admits that Labour has blocked Brexit and that is why voters ”can’t stand Corbyn”.
‘If even Corbyn’s closest political allies think he is unfit to be Prime Minister, why on earth should voters be expected to put their trust in him and them?
The Conservatives have highlighted the Labour leader’s opposition to Trident nuclear missiles and historic opposition to Nato during the election campaign
Asked if he thought Mr Corbyn was a threat to national security, Mr Ashworth replied: ‘No, of course I don’t…’
The election race is STILL tightening, actually! New poll shows Boris Johnson could face another hung parliament – after the Tories rushed out their ‘Brexit actually’ advert early following a disastrous day of campaigning
Boris Johnson’s hopes of winning a majority are hanging in the balance with just two days until the general election after a new poll showed the Tory lead over Labour is now just seven points.
The Savanta ComRes survey, conducted between December 6-8, puts the Tories on 43 per cent and Labour on 36 per cent.
If such numbers were replicated on polling day it could lead to a hung parliament, with the Electoral Calculus website suggesting it would leave the Conservatives a handful of seats short of a majority.
Tory strategists are concerned Labour may not need to gain a single seat to oust Mr Johnson with the party’s private polling showing losing just 12 seats to the SNP and Lib Dems could put Jeremy Corbyn in Number 10.
Mr Johnson will today try to get his campaign back on track after a disastrous day for the Tories yesterday which saw the PM embroiled in a damaging row over the treatment of a sick four-year-old boy who was photographed lying on the floor of Leeds General Infirmary.
The PM was confronted with the widely-publicised picture of Jack Williment-Barr by an ITV reporter and initially refused to look at it as he put the interviewer’s phone in his pocket before backing down.
The hospital row then worsened as the Tories wrongly accused a Labour activist of punching Matt Hancock’s adviser as the Health Secretary left the hospital in question after trying to defuse the row. A video of the altercation showed the aide had walked into the protestor’s hand.
Mr Johnson then published a new Tory party political broadcast on his Twitter page at 9.36pm last night in a move which appeared to be designed to force the election campaign focus away from the NHS and back onto the PM’s preferred battleground of Brexit.
In the video, Mr Johnson recreates a famous scene from the film Love Actually as he knocks on a member of the public’s door and uses a slideshow of cards with handwritten messages on to hammer home his core election mantra of ‘Get Brexit Done’.
The timing of the publication of the ‘Brexit, actually’ video raised eyebrows because it came at the end of a torrid day for the Tories and with the Conservative Party due to broadcast the election advert at 6.55pm on the BBC this evening.
A new SavantaComRes poll gives the Tories a seven point lead over Labour. It puts the Tories on 43 per cent and Labour on 36 per cent. If such a result is replicated at the election on Thursday it could result in a hung Parliament
Tory strategists are worried that Mr Johnson’s position as the clear frontrunner in the race for Number 10 could make his supporters complacent.
The Tories fear that could result in Conservative voters failing to turn out to vote on Thursday.
As a result, the party is cranking up its ‘fight for every vote’ and is warning the election is tighter than people think.
The Conservatives are also blitzing voters with their ‘Get Brexit Done’ slogans in the final campaign sprint before polling day.
Urging viewers to ‘vote Conservative actually’ in the Tory advert published last night, Mr Johnson unveils placards that read: ‘Your vote has never been more important. The other guy could win.
‘So you have a choice to make. Between a working majority.
‘Or another gridlocked hung parliament.’
Labour has been gradually eating into Mr Johnson’s poll lead in recent days but it looks like it is too little too late for Mr Corbyn in terms of his chances of victory.
However, the Labour leader could yet deprive Mr Johnson of a majority.
Campaign gurus in Conservative HQ have said Mr Corbyn’s prospects of becoming prime minister have been ‘seriously underestimated’.
A leaked memo between Tory pollster Michael Brooks and chief strategist Isaac Levido seen by the Daily Telegraph said ‘as little as a 1 to 2 per cent movement in the current vote in a handful of seats’ could result in a hung parliament.
Mr Brooks goes on to caution that a complacent belief that a Conservative victory is in the bag poses a ‘major risk’ to the party maintaining its grip on government.
Although Mr Corbyn’s chances of clinching a majority himself appear to be wafer-thin, it is feared a coordinated and highly-effective tactical voting operation could deprive Mr Johnson of an overall victory and lead to a coalition of Remain parties coalescing around the Labour leader.
The woman is relaxing on the sofa with her partner when the doorbell goes in the unconventional election broadcast
A Conservative election broadcast which aired in Wales tonight starred the Prime Minister as one of the movie’s hopeless romantics who uses a slideshow of placards to tell a woman he loves her
The skit opens with Boris telling the woman to pretend it’s carol singers at the door
The Tory two-pronged strategy ran through the party’s final election broadcast, where the PM recreated a famous scene from Love Actually and used a slideshow of billboards to hammer out his messages
Key point: The PM insists Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour could still gain power if tactical voting isn’t taken sufficiently seriously
One by one he turned over the cards – which each only had a few words on – addressed to a woman he was trying to woo from across the threshold
Pro-EU campaigners have wargamed that it would only take 40,000 voters scattered across roughly 30 marginal seats to vote tactically to return a hung parliament, paving the way for Mr Corbyn to potentially take power.
Polling suggests that more voters than ever before are prepared to vote tactically in this election, which the Conservatives worry could claim some large party scalps such as ex-leader Iain Duncan Smith and one-time Mayoral candidate Zac Goldsmith, whose chief rivals have been bolstered by Remain candidates standing aside.
In a bid to counter ‘TnT’ – tactical voting and turnout complacency concerns – Mr Johnson’s Love Actually-themed broadcast underscored the possibility of a Labour election upset.
Clutching a pile of billboards and a stereo playing carols, he emulated the famous scene between Andrew Lincoln and Keira Knightly.
One by one he turned over the cards – which each only had a few words on – addressed to a woman he was trying to woo from across the threshold.
They read: ‘With any luck, by next year. We’ll have Brexit done. If Parliament doesn’t block it again. And we can move on.
‘But for now let me say. Your vote has never been more important. The other guy could win.
‘So you have a choice to make. Between a working majority. Or another gridlocked hung parliament. Arguing about Brexit. Until I look like this.’
In the 2003 rom-com Andrew Lincoln tells Keira Knightly he loves her over the threshold of her home while her boyfriend is inside
Jeremy Corbyn also shared his own online video in which he is filmed reading out ‘mean tweets’ which people have posted insulting him
Mr Corbyn, pictured during an appearance on BBC Breakfast this morning, rejected accusations of Labour using the NHS as a ‘political football’
He then showed a picture of a scruffy blonde sheepdog which prompted a snort of laughter from the redhead woman.
Mr Johnson continued: ‘It’s closer than you think. We only need nine more seats to get an election. And on 12th December. Your vote will make all the difference. Merry Christmas.’
Love Actually is widely regarded as one of the nation’s favourite Christmas films and is often re-watched by families on December 25.
But the star of the 2003 rom-com, Hugh Grant, who plays the prime minister, is an active Remain activist and has been leafleting with pro-EU Lib Dem and Labour candidates.
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn published his own new social media video last night as he was filmed reading out ‘mean tweets’ which had been directed at him on Twitter.
Sitting in front of a roaring fire, Mr Corbyn read out a series of rude messages including one which said: ‘I’ll bet Jeremy Corbyn will be glad when this election is over so he can go back to wearing his commie hat.’
The latest Conservative broadcast asking people to ‘vote Conservative actually’ comes after Mr Johnson deployed another film reference to steer people away from Labour.
He said voters should swing behind the Tories to avoid waking up on Friday the 13th to see the ‘Nightmare on Downing Street’ of Mr Corbyn in charge.