Days to General Election: 6
(Bloomberg) — Sign up here to get the Brexit Bulletin in your inbox every weekday.
What’s Happening? Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn go head-to-head one final time, as the Labour leader accuses the prime minister of misleading the public.
It’s been almost 100 years since the market town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, in England’s West Midlands, elected anything than a Labour member of Parliament. It’s now on the point of voting Conservative, driven by support for Brexit and anger at political deadlock in London.
“I’ve worked in the mines and I’ve worked with laboring men all my life,” Arthur Jim Nixon, 77, said when the local Conservative candidate, Aaron Bell, knocked on his door. “I like Boris [Johnson, the prime minister]. I don’t like this Labour Party because they criticize Jews. Live and let live.”
Newcastle is just one block in Labour’s so-called “Red Wall,” a previously impregnable band of constituencies running across the middle of the U.K. from North Wales to almost the East coast of England. As pollsters have projected — and as we found in our reporting — it’s now an edifice that Johnson’s Tories are trying to topple.
Thirty-five of the 50 Labour seats with the slimmest margin of victory last time are in places that backed Brexit and most of them are in the Midlands or north of England, according to John Curtice, professor of politics at Strathclyde University in Glasgow and the U.K.’s most prominent psephologist.
Labour expects to lose some seats, though its not clear how many, according to a senior party official. Internal polling and feedback from voters suggests the Conservatives are on course for that majority, the person said. Why? Because Corbyn was unpopular on the doorstep, the Labour campaign was incoherent and its policy promises were not credible, the official said.
Corbyn and Johnson go head-to-head in a final televised debate this evening. It comes with the prime minister under fire for avoiding tough questions on his honesty from the BBC’s Andrew Neil, and Corbyn acknowledging that he’s a “Marmite” figure: “Some people like it and some people don’t,” he said today.
This election is coming down to a question of trust — and of taste.
Today’s Must-Reads
Just out: Five senior figures from both the Conservative and Labour parties believe Johnson is heading for a majority, Bloomberg’s Tim Ross reports.
Across British industry, Brexit remains a dirty word — unless you’re a customs agent, Bloomberg’s Joe Mayes reports.
Brexit has transformed Belfast into a key election battleground, giving long-time rivals even more reasons to trade insults.
Brexit in Brief
Trading Brexit | Traders are betting on a Conservative Party majority as the market’s preferred outcome — one predicted by every poll. But be careful: These forecasts have been wrong before, and some asset gains are starting to look overdone.
Border Checks | Corbyn accused Johnson’s government of misleading voters on the impact of his Brexit deal, brandishing a leaked document and saying that checks on goods would be needed between Northern Ireland and Great Britain. Johnson dismissed Labour’s statement as “complete nonsense.”
Tory Lead Narrows | Today’s Ipsos MORI/Evening Standard poll puts the Conservatives on 44%, Labour on 32% and the Liberal Democrats on a “disastrous” 13%. Party leader net approval ratings are also worth digesting: Johnson sits on -20, while Corbyn plumbs the depths at -44.
Major Issue | Former Conservative Prime Minister Sir John Major urged voters to re-elect three MPs who were forced out of the party after rebelling against Johnson’s Brexit plans in Parliament. Major backed David Gauke, Dominic Grieve and Anne Milton, who are all standing as independents.
Uncharted Waters | The European Union’s trade chief signaled that post-Brexit Britain and the EU would struggle to reach a free-trade agreement before the end of 2020. “We have no accurate way to predict how long it will take,” Phil Hogan was due to say on Friday in Dublin. “We are entering completely uncharted waters.”
Who Will Win? | Forget Brexit. Stop stressing about the election. The only contest that matters today is Bloomberg’s hunt for the best mince pie in Britain. We asked top London baker Lily Vanilli. Her conclusion? Price and quality aren’t always correlated.
Want to keep up with Brexit?
You can follow us @Brexit on Twitter, and listen to Bloomberg Westminster every weekday. It’s live at midday on Bloomberg Radio and is available as a podcast too.
Share the Brexit Bulletin: Colleagues, friends and family can sign up here. For full EU coverage, try the Brussels Edition.
For even more: Subscribe to Bloomberg All Access for our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, The Bloomberg Open and The Bloomberg Close.
To contact the authors of this story: Kitty Donaldson in London at [email protected] Hutton in London at [email protected]
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Adam Blenford at [email protected], Chris Kay
For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.