General election: Corbyn attacks ‘establishment elite’ as he tries to shrug off Labour’s poll deficit

NHS at heart of party's battle for the general election

Jeremy Corbyn has attempted to brush off poor personal poll ratings as he enters the general election battle with Boris Johnson, insisting: “It’s not about me… it’s not a presidential election.”

The comment came as Mr Corbyn launched Labour’s election campaign with a speech in which he accused Johnson’s Conservatives of being part of an “establishment elite” of tax dodgers, dodgy landlords, bad bosses and polluters.

He promised “the biggest people-powered campaign in history” to deliver “a society that works for everybody and not just the billionaires”.

And he put healthcare at the heart of Labour’s appeal to voters, declaring that he would like to see every worker delivering NHS services employed by the state and warning that Conservative plans for a post-Brexit trade deal with Donald Trump would divert £500 million a week into the hands of US drug companies.

But he appeared to back away from a policy agreed at Labour’s conference to abolish private schools like Eton, saying only that the manifesto to be finalised at an upcoming meeting would certainly include measures to ensure private schools “pay their taxes”.

The campaign launch came with Mr Corbyn’s personal poll ratings at historic lows, with just 15 per cent in an Ipsos Mori poll declaring themselves satisfied with his performance, against 75 per cent who were dissatisfied - an overall rating of minus-60.

The score was the worst recorded by any opposition leader since the monthly survey began in 1977, dipping below even the darkest days of Michael Foot’s leadership of Labour in the run-up to its disastrous 1983 election defeat.

It compared with a plus-two rating for Mr Johnson, with 46 per cent satisfied and 44 per cent dissatisfied. And the same poll gave Conservatives a commanding 17-point lead on 41 per cent (up eight points since a similar survey last month) to Labour unchanged on 24 per cent, with Liberal Democrats on 20 per cent (down three) and Brexit Party 7 per cent (down three).

After launching his campaign with a speech in south London with the shadow cabinet on stage beside him, Mr Corbyn was challenged over whether his poor personal ratings will hold Labour back in the December election.

He replied: “It’s not about me. It’s not about any individual on this platform. It’s not a presidential election.”

There were some boos from the audience of Labour activists for a reporter who asked whether Mr Corbyn would stand down as leader if Labour lost.

And he dodged the question of whether he would serve a full five years as prime minister, replying: “I love doing this job, I love meeting people, I love campaigning and above all I’ll be so proud to lead a Labour government that ends Universal Credit and builds the council houses we need.”

Mr Corbyn declined to say whether current members of his shadow cabinet would retain their existing policy briefs in a government led by him.

Promising to protect the NHS from privatisation, he warned that Mr Johnson’s “toxic trade deal with Trump” could “hand over £500 million a week of NHS money to big drugs corporations”.

(Reuters TV (Reuters TV)

To an audience chant of “Not for sale“, the Labour leader vowed: “We will stop them. Labour won’t let Donald Trump get his hands on our National Health Service. It’s not for sale, to him or anyone.”

He called on tycoon Sir Richard Branson to hand money his Virgin Care firm had received from suing the NHS to charity.

And he named individual businessmen Mike Ashley, Jim Ratcliffe, Crispin Odey, Rupert Murdoch and the Duke of Westminster as he said: You know what really scares the elite? All of us, the British people.

“What the elite are actually afraid of is paying their taxes.

“So in this election, they’ll fight harder and dirtier than ever before. They’ll throw everything at us because they know we’re not afraid to take them on.

“So we’re going after the tax dodgers. We’re going after the dodgy landlords. We’re going after the bad bosses. We’re going after the big polluters. Because we know whose side we’re on.

“And the big question of this election is: whose side are you on?”

- Ipsos Mori interviewed a representative sample of 1,001 adults by telephone on 25-28 October.