Jeremy Hunt has admitted that Jeremy Corbyn would trounce him in a general election.
“Would be disastrous”
Speaking on Sky News on 24 June, the Conservative leadership hopeful said:
is he going to have an election in order to get a majority in parliament for a no-deal Brexit? Because I think Conservative Party members need to know the answer to those questions. I personally think that an election would be disastrous, I think we’d let Corbyn into Number 10
"Sometimes in politics you can fudge, but on #Brexit you can't."@Jeremy_Hunt blasts "disrespectful" @BorisJohnson on #Sunrise after the former foreign secretary declines a Sky News debate.
More on the #ToryLeadershipContest here: https://t.co/I3ufsIq63n pic.twitter.com/QcBIF7Hbp9
— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 24, 2019
Hunt openly admitting that Corbyn would bring about a disastrous result for the Conservative Party is quite the change. This is the man that former prime minister David Cameron once attacked as being “unelectable”.
But, in June 2019, Corbyn’s Labour is ahead in the most recent polls, and enjoyed a ten point lead only a month ago in one poll.
Government of chaos
Hunt and the Conservatives’ record on elections, meanwhile, is telling. Eyeing favourable polling back in 2017, the Conservative government called an election in an opportunistic bid for more power. Now the country needs an election to solve the Brexit deadlock, and the government is refusing to call one.
Instead, Conservative members alone will decide the next prime minister. Yet this is a government that has presided over:
- The first and fourth largest governmental defeats of all-time.
- The first defeat on a finance bill in 40 years.
- Being found in contempt of parliament in a historic first.
- Reinstating MPs under investigation for sexual abuse to pass a key Brexit vote.
- Windrush, where May’s hostile environment policy saw people from the Caribbean who came to rebuild Britain after World War II deported, refused medical care, and made homeless.
- Grenfell, where Conservative deregulation and cuts enabled a tragic fire that killed over 70 working class people.
According to Sky Data, the public isn’t too happy about having no say. Its polling found that 54% want a general election when there’s a new prime minister, while 36% thought there shouldn’t be one.
Frankly, the idea that the Conservatives can simply impose another prime minister on the country is absurd. Yet Hunt is openly admitting that the main reason for doing so is because they’re worried they’ll lose an election. It’s an indictment of UK democracy that there isn’t more pressure from the media to do what’s right.
Featured image via Twitter – Sky News / YouTube – The Telegraph
