Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn finalised their preparations for tonight’s historic leaders’ debate – with boxing and a beard trim.
The Prime Minister headed north with partner Carrie Symonds – their first joint campaigning appearance of the election campaign – ahead of the ITV head-to-head in Salford.
While the gloves will come off later they were very much on this morning as Mr Johnson visited Jimmy Egan’s Boxing Academy in Manchester – with ‘Get Brexit Done’ across his fists.
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn opted for a more leisurely pre-debate routine, visiting a barber for a beard trim before he appears in front of the cameras.
Mr Johnson will launch a full-frontal political attack on Jeremy Corbyn with an ultimatum to stop ‘dithering’ on his election and Brexit plans when the two leaders go head-to-head in the television showdown tonight.
The Prime Minister issued a challenge to his Labour counterpart warning that failure to answer on key points would leave the public with ‘no choice but to conclude that Corbyn’s Labour, propped up by the SNP, will mean dither, delay and uncertainty’.
In a letter published by the Tories last night he set Mr Corbyn four questions to answer: how he would vote in a second Brexit referendum, what Labour’s position on freedom of movement is, how much he would pay the EU for ‘market access’, and whether all of his MPs would back his Brexit policy.
Boris Johnson with partner Carrie Symonds prepare to board a train to Manchester for the debate this morning
While the gloves will come off later they were very much on this morning as the PM visited Jimmy Egan’s Boxing Academy in Manchester
Both men will be hoping to avoid being on the ropes in tonight’s leaders’ debate
Meanwhile, Mr Corbyn opted for a more leisurely pre-debate routine, visiting a barber for a beard trim before he appears in front of the cameras
Tory sources said the Prime Minister would use the debate to hammer home his central message that only the Conservatives can be relied upon to deliver Brexit – while also raising concerns about Labour’s opposition to immigration controls.
Tonight’s ITV debate from Salford is the first time the two largest party leaders have squared off on live television in an election debate.
Mr Johnson headed for the North West this morning, being pictured at Euston station with partner Carrie Symonds.
Previous debates have featured a wider array of leaders, but Theresa May refused to take part ahead of the 2017 election where she lost the Tory majority.
One ally of the PM acknowledged that it was a ‘risk’ to take on an opponent who is lagging far behind in the polls.
‘Corbyn has nothing to lose,’ the source said. ‘I’ll be sleeping a lot easier once it’s over.’
The Liberal Democrats and SNP yesterday lost a High Court challenge to have Jo Swinson and Nicola Sturgeon included in the debate. The two parties claimed ITV’s decision was unlawful because it breached impartiality rules. Lawyers for the Lib Dems claimed that with Labour sitting on the fence on Brexit, ‘the voice of Remain has been excluded’ from the debate.
But two judges ruled that the decision was not open to challenge in the courts and that the parties’ only recourse was to complain to Ofcom.
Tonight’s hour-long debate – with Julie Etchingham as the moderator – will be split into two halves, with the first devoted to Brexit.
Baggage: The PM appeared heavily laden with a personal bag as well as a ministerial red box of documents
They were seen getting on a Virgin train to the North West ahead of the live televised head-to-head with Jeremy Cobyn in Salford
In a statement of intent, Mr Johnson last night wrote to his Labour opponent in an attempt to put pressure on him ahead of the debate
Mr Corbyn leaving his North London home this morning
Both sides believe that the debate is likely to be the first time that many voters engage with the election arguments. The first televised election debates in 2010 attracted audiences of close to ten million.
Tory strategists have told Mr Johnson to go after Mr Corbyn over his attempt to sit on the fence during the Brexit debate.
In his letter to Mr Corbyn last night, the PM said voters had a ‘right to know’ what Labour planned to do on key issues facing the country, adding: ‘So far in this campaign, you have ducked those questions.’
While Mr Johnson will hammer his opponent on Brexit, Tory strategists are urging him to also use the debate to paint a positive vision of life after Brexit, stressing his commitment to investing in public services like the NHS, schools and the police.
Mr Corbyn will attempt to press Mr Johnson on the fate of the NHS in a post-Brexit trade deal.
The debate will be broadcast on ITV live and led by presenter Julie Etchingham
Now that’s an EU turn: In his own flip-flopping words, how Jeremy’s story keeps changing
Analysis by Ross Clark
When asked by the BBC’s Andrew Marr on Sunday whether he wanted to leave the EU or remain in it, Jeremy Corbyn refused to answer five times. So what does the Labour leader, who was once an ardent Eurosceptic but has since called for a second referendum, really believe?
What he is saying now:
‘We’re going to put that choice to the British people and they will make that decision,’ he told Marr when asked if he wants to Leave or Remain.
What he has said in past:
Outlining his vision for ‘Britain after Brexit’ in a speech in February last year, Corbyn claimed Labour would see Brexit through. He said: ‘Labour respects the result of the referendum and Britain is leaving the EU.’
Jeremy Corbyn, pictured at the CBI conference in London on Monday, has continued to switch his position on Brexit
Now:
‘Three years after the EU referendum, the country stands at a precipice,’ Corbyn told The Observer in September, commenting on how he planned to thwart a No Deal Brexit. ‘[Boris Johnson] has no right to drive our country off a cliff and into the arms of Donald Trump with his No Deal fixation.’
In the past:
For many years Corbyn advocated leaving the EU, deal or no deal. In 1993 he told Parliament that the Maastrict Treaty, which ratified further European integration, ‘takes away from national parliaments the power to set economic policy and hands it over to an unelected set of bankers who will impose the economic policies of price stability, deflation and high unemployment throughout the European Community’. Corbyn ultimately voted against the treaty, just as he had voted to leave the then Common Market in the first EU referendum in 1975.
Now:
‘I want a close relationship with the EU in future,’ Corbyn told Marr.
In the past:
Corbyn certainly didn’t want ‘a close relationship with the EU’ in 1996 when he described it as a ‘European bureaucracy totally unaccountable to anybody’. Indeed, as late as June 2015 – just a year before the referendum – he wrote in a blog for the Huffington Post website that ‘there is no future for a usurious Europe that turns its smaller nations into colonies of debt peonage’.
The leader of the opposition, pictured at the CBI conference in London on Monday, said in 1996 that he didn’t want a close relationship with the EU. However, on the Andrew Marr programme he said he did want a close relationship with the trade bloc
Now:
Speaking to the BBC ahead of the Labour conference in September, Corbyn laid out his vision for a future relationship with the EU: ‘We have consistently put forward what I believe to be a credible option, which is based on five pillars – the customs union, the trade relationship, protection of consumer and environmental rights, and, of course, the Good Friday agreement.’
In the past:
In 2008 when then Prime Minister Gordon Brown asked the Commons to approve the Lisbon Treaty, which centralised EU power, Corbyn reminded Parliament that the EU had ‘always suffered a serious democratic deficit’ and promoted ‘ever-limiting powers for national parliaments and an increasingly powerful common foreign and security policy’.
Now:
‘My whole strategy has been to try to bring people together on both sides of the argument,’ he told Marr.
In the past:
For the majority of his parliamentary career, Corbyn’s remarks were anything but unifying. Even during his campaign to be Labour leader in 2015, Corbyn didn’t mince his words. At one hustings, he said: ‘I’m concerned about the way that European Union is increasingly operating like a free market across Europe, tearing up the Social Chapter, damaging working-class and workers’ interests across Europe… ‘
At another point during that campaign, he said: ‘If Europe becomes a totally brutal organisation that treats every one of its member states in the way that the people of Greece have been treated at the moment, then I think Europe will lose a lot of support from a lot of people.’
