Hague’s attack on Labour relies on press support to hide the hate behind Tory policies
William Hague made the plea to the holder of his old job as Tory leader [Image: Getty].
Does he really think topsy-turvy Theresa, who reverses her policies whenever big business tells her to, who is leading us out of the European Union and into a trade and finance desert, who is presiding over the collapse of our once-revered health service and the ruin of social care, and who is happy to support “disabled genocide”, as it was described on TV last week, could win a fairly-fought election?
Of course he doesn’t.
He’s banking on a strongly anti-Corbyn media reporting his words without offering even the slightest defence of the Labour leader, and it seems to be working – if the report quoted below, from the ostensibly Labour-supporting Mirror, is any yardstick.
Alongside the Hague comments, it reports on a YouGov poll stating that support for Mr Corbyn has fallen. Those of us who believe in the existence of a ‘soft coup’ (Tom Watson’s ‘Project Anaconda’, to put the squeeze on support for Mr Corbyn, perhaps?) may see corroboration of their suspicions in the finding that support for Mr Corbyn has fallen by 18 per cent.
But we can also see that hardly anybody wants a return to the hard-right (for Labour) politics of Yvette Cooper, Chuka Umunna or even current flavour-of-the-moment Keir Starmer.
Those names show how reporting of these polls are skewed, by the way – while the right-wingers were runners-up in a scenario that had Mr Corbyn standing (and winning) again, the results if he stood down showed very clearly that Labour members would want another left-wing leader.
According to the YouGov poll quoted by the Mirror, if Mr Corbyn stood down, Labour members would want John McDonnell as leader, even though he has said he would not stand, with Clive Lewis a distant second.
It’s fascinating, what you learn when you’ve got all the information, isn’t it?
Former Tory leader William Hague … called for an early general election hours after a grim new poll for Jeremy Corbyn .
The peer urged Theresa May to scrap the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act – which effectively gives Labour a veto on holding an election before 2020.
Writing in the Daily Telegraph, he said it would “catch the Labour Party in its worst condition since the early Thirties, and with its least credible leader”.
Lord Hague’s plea came after a poll found Jeremy Corbyn has slumped among Labour Party members over the past 12 months.
The YouGov survey of Labour Party members showed support for the leader fell from 72% to 54% between February 2016 and February 2017.
But conversely Mr Corbyn remained way out in front of any other leading politician when Labour members were asked who was the best candidate for leader.
Source: William Hague urges Tories to force an early election while Jeremy Corbyn faces grim new poll
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Hague always was a jumped up little twerp.
I have lost confidence in YouGov polls since they seem to have stopped sending me questionnaires … maybe because they don’t like my choices. E.g. pro=Corbyn, etc. I obviously can’t conclude this as an example of only one, but maybe some of your other readers have had similar experiences?
Isn’t YouGov a Tory funded organisation? Hardly a neutral poll then is it? It shows how scared the so called neutral press and government are about Jeremy Corbyn, that they have to resort to these tactics.
They will be shocked when Jeremy wins an early general election, should Theresa May actually go ahead with Hague’s plans. I think it will be like Cameron thinking the referendum would go his way and it didn’t.
Well other than the nonsense about being lead out of the eu into an economic desert, that remain propaganda has been abandoned by all those who weren’t actually fooled or knew it was utter nonsense, it is a decent article.
Readers: Make allowances for Barry’s prejudices. He’s not going to stop repeating them; you just have to develop a blind spot.
Nothing like a Tory to want his cake and eat it. His party brought in the fixed 5-year parliament early on, to ensure a good stretch of time for themselves to start the demolition of the welfare state, without Labour getting in the way. Now they don’t see Labour as a threat (always were blinkered), they want to repeal the act to get themselves a few more extra years. The sad thing is that they would probably win since most of England seems incapable of seeing past the tabloids.
MIKE
Might Lord William have realised the Election Fraud investigations are about to conclude?
Otherwise, why wasn’t he saying this the weekend after Copeland, ie strike while the iron is hot from their point of view, rather than this weekend’s leaks about the probe being about to conclude ie OMG, it’s about to hit the fan!?
Steve
I receive YOUGOV polls but never the link in my emails to register my response. Why is this I wonder? Because I support Corbyn perhaps?