JEREMY CORBYN CALLS FOR MAY TO RESIGN AFTER HUNG PARLIAMENT CONFIRMED
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JEREMY CORBYN CALLS FOR MAY TO RESIGN AFTER HUNG PARLIAMENT CONFIRMED
Buoyant
Labour Leader Says People ‘Have Had Enough Of Austerity Politics’ As Pressure
Mounts On Prime Minister
Jeremy Corbyn
said the face of British politics has changed and called on Theresa May to
resign after her snap general election left Britain with a hung parliament 11
days before Brexit talks begin.
Speaking
as he was returned as MP for Islington North, the Labour leader declared:
“Politics has changed. Politics isn’t going back into the box where it was
before. What’s happened is people have said they’ve had quite enough of
austerity politics.”
Corbyn
said May had called the election to assert her authority. “She wanted a
mandate. Well, the mandate she’s got is lost Conservative seats, lost votes,
lost support and lost confidence. I would have thought that is enough for her
to go.”
The
Conservative leader appeared crushed as she accepted her victory in the
constituency of Maidenhead with a shaky speech in which she repeated her
resolve to provide the stability the country needed before Brexit talks.
“If
the Conservative party has won the most seats and most votes then it will be
incumbent that we will have that period of stability and that is what we will
do,” she said, but her long-term future remained uncertain.
By
the early hours of Friday morning, pressure was mounting on the prime minister
as Tory MP Anna Soubry broke ranks to say May should “consider her position”.
“It
is bad. She is in a very difficult place … It was a dreadful night. I’ve lost
some excellent and remarkable friends,” she said. “This is a very bad moment
for the Conservative party and we need to take stock and our leader needs to
take stock.”
Senior
Conservative sources said recriminations were already beginning among cabinet
ministers, with David Davis singled out by some of his colleagues for pressing
May to gamble on holding the snap poll. “There are a lot of very very pissed
off people in the cabinet – and with him in particular,” said one.
The
former chancellor George Osborne described it as a “catastrophic” result while
another Conservative MP said: “She needs to go.”
The
tight result, first indicated in a shock exit poll on Thursday night that
showed the Conservatives likely to be the largest party in a hung parliament,
represented a disastrousnight for May.
Shortly
before 6am on Friday, Labour held two key seats in Southampton to bring its
total to 258 so far and deny the Conservatives the
possibility of securing a majority. It was projected the Tories would end up
with fewer than 320 seats.
The
failure of the prime minister’s election gamble, taken when the party was more
than 20 points ahead in the polls, triggered uncertainty on the eve of Brexit
talks, causing a drop in the value of sterling.
Speaking
from his home in Islington, north London, shortly after midnight, the Labour
leader said: “Whatever the final result, we have already changed the face of
British politics.
Labour secured a first ever win
in the previously safe Conservative seat of Canterbury, and also took control
of Peterborough, which was one of the Brexit capitals of the country. There
were also gains for Corbyn’s party in Battersea, Stockton South, Bury North and
Vale of Clwyd.
A difficult night for the SNP
delivered one of the biggest scalps, with the party’s Westminster leader, Angus
Robertson, losing his seat in Moray.
The former Lib Dem leader and
deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, spoke out about the need for the government
to be sensitive about huge societal divisions as he was defeated by Labour in
Sheffield Hallam.
The party’s leader, Tim Farron,
hung on to his seat in Cumbria, while Vince Cable regained the Twickenham seat
he lost in 2015.
The Conservative minister, Ben
Gummer, a close ally of the prime minister and a key author of the party’s
manifesto, lost in Ipswich while the financial secretary to the Treasury, Jane
Ellison, was defeated in Battersea, south-west London.
The home secretary, Amber Rudd,
faced a recount in a tight race in Hastings but just held on.
It was a bad night for Ukip, in
which the party’s leader, Paul Nuttall, came third in Boston and Skegness, and
it was crushed in its former seat of Clacton.
The foreign secretary, Boris
Johnson, said the Conservatives had to listen to constituents as his own
majority fell – but bookies also slashed the odds of him becoming the next Tory
leader.
The shock result came after a
gruelling seven-week battle in which supporters of Corbyn flocked to almost 100
rallies across the country in a vibrant and energetic campaign.
The Labour leader ended a tour of
several seats starting in Glasgow on the final day of campaigning with a speech
on the edge of his constituency in Islington, where he said that Labour’s
anti-austerity message represented the “new centre ground” of British politics.
Corbyn sustained a string of attacks
from Conservatives and also parts of the media, with a number of newspapers
calling on their readers to reject him in Thursday’s poll.
John McDonnell, the shadow
chancellor, hit out at the negative and “nasty” tactics of his opponents,
insisting Labour had stuck to upbeat arguments.
“I think it does change the
nature of political discourse. I think people have got fed up with the yah-boo
politics and some of the nasty tactics that have gone on recently.”
Earlier he told the Guardian that May’s general election
campaign – in which he and Corbyn were accused of being terrorist sympathisers
– was an “exact reflection” of Zac Goldsmith’s Conservative bid to become Londonmayor, which triggered anger and accusations of dog-whistle politics.
May’s effort was seen as more
turbulent given her U-turn over social care plans and the decision to base the
entire thrust of the campaign on her character appearing to backfire.
Recriminations focused on the party’s manifesto, which caused division at the
top of the party.
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