Labour is ready to discuss ditching Jeremy Corbyn and holding a second referendum on Scottish independence in order to secure power during post-election horse-trading, a senior party adviser said yesterday.
The party would ‘need to have conversations’ with the Liberal Democrats and SNP if the election produces a hung parliament, Lord Kerslake added.
The former Whitehall mandarin, who is advising Labour on the transition to power, said Mr Corbyn’s future could be on the table in power-sharing talks.
He added: ‘The Lib Dems have said they could not support a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government and the SNP have said they would want a second referendum.
‘All of that would form part of the conversation that Labour would be having informally with those two parties.’
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn announcing his party’s ‘arts for all’ policy at the Theatre Royal Stratford East in London yesterday
Labour sources played down Lord Kerslake’s comments, noting that he is not a party spokesman and claiming Mr Corbyn’s future would not be on the table in talks designed to win the support of smaller parties for a Labour minority government.
But the party did not issue an on-the-record denial.
Mr Corbyn has previously ruled out post-election pacts, although senior Labour figures acknowledge that the party would be forced to consider concessions if there was a possibility of forming a government in a hung parliament.
Lord Kerslake, a crossbench peer, is close to Labour’s ambitious Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell.
His remarks to Sky News will prompt speculation that Mr McDonnell – who has clashed with Mr Corbyn over Brexit – could be ready to ditch his old ally if that is the price of power next month.
His comments come as Boris Johnson offered Scots a ‘guarantee’ that he will never sanction a second independence referendum.
Writing in today’s Scottish Daily Mail, the Prime Minister said he would reject any request from Nicola Sturgeon for ‘another chaotic and divisive independence referendum’.
He added: ‘If the outcome of this election is a strong Conservative majority government, then I can guarantee that we will reject any request from the SNP government to hold an independence referendum.
There will be no negotiation – we will mark that letter return to sender and be done with it.’
Miss Sturgeon has made a second referendum a red line for any coalition talks with Labour. Mr Corbyn has opened the door to another poll, ruling it out only for his first year in power.
Scottish National Party Leader Nicola Sturgeon has made a second referendum a red line for any coalition talks with Labour
Labour’s leader in Scotland Richard Leonard confirmed yesterday the party would not stand in the way of another referendum if pro-independence parties win the Scottish Parliament elections in 2021.
He said this result would be a ‘mandate’ for another independence poll.
Tory strategists believe Labour’s decision to open the door to a second referendum presents a major opportunity for Scottish Conservatives as they fight to defend the 13 seats won in 2017.
Mr Johnson will travel to Fife today to launch the Tories’ Scottish manifesto and hammer home the message that the Conservatives are now the only bulwark against the break-up of the Union.
Speaking ahead of the trip, he said the consequence of two referendums next year would be ‘grinding the country to a halt’ and reducing the Union ‘to the status of a bargaining chip’.
The Prime Minister said that if he is re-elected, he will ‘work every day to make our Union stronger’. In contrast, he claimed Mr Corbyn would do a deal with Miss Sturgeon that would threaten the Union and result in more ‘dither, deadlock and indecision’.
Polling experts believe there is almost no chance of Labour winning a majority next month because of the SNP’s dominance in its former Scottish heartland.
But Lord Kerslake suggested Labour could be well placed to put together a minority government with the support of other anti-Brexit parties.
He said the political system would be in ‘uncharted territory’ but added: ‘There are two different tests of success for the two political parties. For the Conservatives to truly consider they have won, they have to get a working majority in Parliament.
‘For Labour to be regarded as having won, they simply need to deprive the Conservatives of that [because] other parties are very much closer to Labour on the issue of Brexit than they are to the Conservatives.’
Miss Sturgeon last night predicted Mr Corbyn would cave in to her demand to hold an independence referendum next year.
She said: ‘It doesn’t appear to be the principle of a second independence referendum that Jeremy Corbyn is quibbling about now, it’s the timing.
Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson on the BBC Question Time debate. The Liberal Democrats have said they could not support a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government
‘So for the sake of a year, he’s going to turn his back on his chance to govern with a Labour government and do all of these other things he says he wants to do – I don’t find that credible.’
Meanwhile, the SNP’s Westminster leader Ian Blackford said Mr Corbyn would also have to ‘show leadership’ and ditch the UK’s Trident nuclear deterrent if he wanted the party’s backing.
Labour’s £58bn plan to compensate three million pensioners is blasted as it is revealed even Theresa May would be in line for a £21,000 state handout
By Daniel Martin Policy Editor For The Daily Mail
Labour faced a furious backlash over its £58billion promise to compensate more than three million female pensioners yesterday as economists warned it would require tax rises.
Jeremy Corbyn pledged at the weekend to reimburse the so-called ‘Waspi’ women who lost out on years of state pension payments when their retirement age was raised.
The party even provided a calculator which enables people to check how much women could be entitled to in compensation. Remarkably, it reveals that Theresa May, who was born in October 1956, would be in line for £21,910.
Yesterday, Paul Johnson, the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, said many of the Waspi women are ‘actually quite well off’ and that Labour has shown a ‘decisive lack of priorities’.
The pledge is on top of last week’s Labour manifesto, which unveiled proposals for huge tax rises of £83billion on business and the richest 5 per cent. The manifesto made no mention of the Waspi pledge, and Labour has not explained how it would be paid for.
Corbyn posing for a selfie with supporters on Monday. He pledged to reimburse women who lost out on years of state pension when their retirement age was raised
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme, Mr Johnson said the policy’s estimated cost of £58billion is ‘a very, very large sum of money indeed’.
He added: ‘I think there are two interesting things about that – one is the sheer scale of it, and of course it immediately breaks the promises they made in their manifesto just last week only to borrow to invest.
‘So, they would need even more than their £80billion tax rises if they wanted to cover that.
‘The other, I suppose, is just a statement of priorities or decisive lack of priorities, because there’s so much money for so many things, but they’re not finding money, for example, to reverse the welfare cuts for genuinely poor people of working wage.
‘Whilst some of these Waspi women really have suffered hardship as a result of not realising that this pension age increase is happening, although it was announced back in the early 1990s, many of them are actually quite well off.’
Mr Corbyn met a group of Waspi women in Renishaw, north-east Derbyshire, and told them he was ‘proud’ of the policy.
Former prime minister Theresa May speaking in the Commons last month. A Labour Party calculator revealed that under their proposals even she would get a £21,910 payout
‘We owe a moral debt to these women,’ he said. ‘They were misled. They’ve lost a lot of money.
‘The women I’ve just been talking to have lost between £30,000 and £50,000 each because of this.
‘They are dedicated people to their communities and their families, and they’re very angry about the way they’ve been treated.’
Mr Corbyn refused to say that the pledge to the Waspi women means going against Labour’s promises on borrowing only for investment, adding ‘the government is obliged to pay’.
He said: ‘It’s a moral debt we owe to these women and, had the court case gone the other way, or another court case goes against the government, the government would have to pay, the government is obliged to pay… What we’re saying is we will pay it.’
Shadow housing secretary John Healey said the Waspi pledge was not fully costed in the party’s manifesto as it is ‘not a regular spending commitment’.
Women expecting to retire at 60 were told they would have to wait longer when changes to the state pension age were accelerated in 2010.
Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn poses for a selfie with a supporter in Renishaw on Monday
In 2018 the retirement age for women rose to 65, in line with men.
Waspi women – the Women Against State Pension Inequality – argue that they were not given enough time to prepare for the changes.
Labour has said it would make individual payments averaging £15,380 to the 3.7million women it claims were affected by the changes to the state pension age.
Record-breaking surge of new voters under 35 sign up to take part in general election before tonight’s deadline
By Sam Greenhill
Record-breaking numbers of young voters have registered to take part in the election.
In just one day, more than 200,000 under-35s were among the almost 308,000 who signed up to vote.
Last Friday’s surge of registrations follows a drive by Labour to mobilise younger voters, who are more likely to back Jeremy Corbyn.
But it will also ring alarm bells among those concerned about the potential for voter fraud, with thousands of students registered both in their university and home towns.
In the 2017 election, 60 per cent of those aged 16-24 backed Mr Corbyn.
The latest national figures showed that among those signing up for the vote last Friday, 103,000 were under-25s, 103,000 were aged 25 to 34, 53,000 were 35 to 44, 28,500 were 45 to 54, and around 20,000 were over 54.
It was the fourth-busiest day for applications in UK political history and the busiest on record for any day other than the deadline – 11.59pm today.
Vote For Your Future said even before Friday, youth registration was above previous levels, with 750,000 under-25s and 1.5million under-35s applying since the start of the campaign.
The Electoral Reform Society said there had been 2.8million applications to register since the election was called, compared with 1.7million at a similar point in the last poll.
