Optimistic Labour supporters are greatly cheered by the party’s boost in the polls. Labour has now cut the gap to single figures for the first time during the election campaign, with YouGov putting Labour on 35 per cent to the Tories’ 44 per cent. So is this proof that Corbyn’s policies are going down well with voters? And could talk of a Tory landslide be wildly optimistic? Here’s the newspaper verdict:
Jeremy Corbyn ‘loves to portray himself as…a man of peace’, the Daily Mail says. So why does he refuse to condemn the IRA? Asked five times yesterday to do just that, the Labour leader refused, ‘offering nothing but weasel words about being opposed to ‘all bombings’’. What’s more, Corbyn appeared to try and lay the blame for the IRA actions elsewhere, says the Mail, suggesting that the British government was at fault for pressing for a ‘military solution’ in Ulster’. This ‘twisted Corbyn narrative’ paints the terrorists as ‘heroic freedom fighters’, the paper argues. So Corbyn is no man of peace, concludes the Mail. Instead, the paper describes Labour’s leader as an ‘IRA cheerleader’ and says the thought of him getting hold of the keys to Number 10 is ‘simply grotesque’.
The Mail goes on to criticise Labour for dubbing Theresa May’s plans to change the way social care funding as a ‘dementia tax’. This description is ‘mendacious and deeply offensive’, argues the paper, which defends the proposed charges by saying that the plans are an acceptance that those ‘who can afford it must shoulder some of the cost of the care they receive in old age’. Saying this policy only affects dementia sufferers is also ‘an insult’ to the millions of OAPs who ‘just need a helping hand’, argues the Mail. Instead of criticising the plans, the announcement that no one need sell their home will come as a relief, the paper concludes.
The social care policy appears to have dented Theresa May’s healthy poll lead – but should he PM be worried? Jeremy Corbyn’s supporters have hailed the boost in support as ‘proof of the popularity of Mr Corbyn’s ultra-Leftist policies’. ‘It is nothing of the kind,’ argues the Daily Telegraph, which calls the small rise ‘barely a tremor let alone an earthquake’. After all, when you dig beneath the figures, the rise in support for Labour ‘stems from the potential backing of new, young voters’. But Labour should remember that it is this group of youngsters who are less likely to turn out. So instead of showing a Labour party on the march to victory, ‘the truth is that this is probably as good as it gets for Labour’. What’s more, the poll boost for Labour could actually help the Tories. Theresa May has been warning about the dangers of Jeremy Corbyn leading Brexit talks if he wins the election. This poll ‘will surely help galvanise any Tory supporters who thought they needn’t bother voting because the result was already in the bag’, concludes the paper.
Labour’s claim to support working class voters ‘gets more ludicrous by the day’, says the Sun. Yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn showed just how ‘out of touch’ he was on immigration by refusing to give a clear answer on ‘the number of migrants he would allow’ into Britain. But it’s not only policies on which Labour is alienating its traditional supporters. The Sun takes a similar argument to the Mail in condemning Corbyn’s refusal to speak out against the IRA during his interview on Sky News yesterday. The paper describes Corbyn’s comments as ‘disgusting’, saying that it is simply ‘shameful…that Mr Corbyn equates the IRA with the army’. But the Sun is not surprised by Corbyn’s words: ‘along with his colleagues John McDonnell and Diane Abbott — the Labour leader has spent his lifetime as a friend of the IRA’.
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