UK election 2019: Labour MPs support Boris as party takes spending back to 1970s

Senior Labour MPs urge support for Boris as the party unveils plans to take spending back to 1970s.

Jeremy Corbyn gestures to photographers after giving a speech to supporters at an election campaign in Darwen. Picture; Getty Images.

Four former Labour MPs — two of them one-time frontbenchers — have urged voters to back Tory Prime Minister Boris Johnson, 24 hours after party deputy leader Tom Waston resigned and stood down as an MP.

Ian Austin — a close aide to ­Labour’s last prime minister Gordon Brown, and who is not standing at the December 12 election — told the BBC that the party has been poisoned by “anti-Jewish racism” since Mr Corbyn became leader in 2015.

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Mr Austin was one of seven MPs who quit Labour in February because of the rise of anti-Semitism in the party and its convoluted Brexit policy. Mr Watson, who resigned on Wednesday night, had repeatedly clashed with Mr Corbyn, over the rise of anti-Semitism and Labour’s lurch to the left.

“I’m not a Tory but decent, traditional voters” should back the Conservative Party ­because “Jeremy Corbyn is totally unfit to lead this country”, he said.

He added that Labour’s economic policies “would leave the country worse off”.

The intervention by Mr Austin, a former minister for the West Midlands, was followed by Labor cum independent MP John Woodcock,who is not standing at this election, and former Labour frontbencher Tom Harris, who said they would be “happier” with a Johnson government.

“The choice to keep Jeremy Corbyn away from Downing Street, to stop him getting his hands on the levers of ­national ­security and defence, has to be to vote Conservative in this election — and that’s what I’ll be doing as well,” Mr Woodcock said on Thursday night.

Mr Harris, who served as a frontbencher under Mr Brown and Tony Blair and quit parliament in 2013, said: “Like Ian Austin, I will be far happier with a Boris Johnson government”.

They were joined by former MP and Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party chairman Michael McCann, who told The Daily Telegraph: “Politicians I would have aligned myself with are all sitting in the corner hiding and hoping Jeremy Corbyn doesn’t notice them. If these people contribute to him becoming prime minister then they are going to have to answer to the electorate for the racism and economic vandalism this mob are going to wreak on this country”.

Britain’s biggest Jewish newspaper pleaded with the public not to vote for Mr Corbyn, ­accusing him of having “allied with and supported anti-Semites”. In a front-page editorial, the Jewish Chronicle highlighted a poll that found that nearly half the Jewish community said it would consider emigrating if Mr Corbyn were to become prime minister.

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Jeremy Corbyn stands with Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell after his major speech on the economy. Picture: Getty Images.

Labour takes spending back to the 1970s

Meanwhile, shadow chancellor John McDonnell unleashed a torrent of spending promises, with $750bn of investment to address social deprivation and the climate emergency in an “impossible” move that would take public spending to the highest level since the 1970s.

Mr McDonnell announced a radical economic plan in housing, education, hospitals and other social services as well as green initiatives, to dovetail with the party’s promises to renationalise public projects of water, rail and mail, saying it was in the best tradition of British socialism.

Mr McDonnell said he would invest £250bn over ten years in green initiatives and £150bn over five years in a social transformation fund.

He said future generations would never forgive them if they didn’t immediately address these twin emergencies.

The shadow chancellor added that Labour would introduce new fiscal rules, so “borrowing for investment” would not be included in borrowing targets and public assets created by infrastructure spending would be recognised both as a cost and as a benefit.

However the Institute for Fiscal Studies warned this would take public spending “to a level unprecedented since the 1970s.” The IFS said the level of investment was so high it would be “just physically impossible to get there that quickly.”

Labour plans to spend an extra £55 billion per year on investment over the next five years.

If delivered, this would more than double public investment spending, to a level unprecedented since the 1970s - a very different era. pic.twitter.com/7bDXdyrG1x

— IFS (@TheIFS) November 7, 2019

On Twitter, the Institute said: “Labour plans to spend an extra £55 billion per year on investment over the next five years.

“If delivered, this would more than double public investment spending, to a level unprecedented since the 1970s – a very different era.’’

Labour’s economic injection is significantly more than what the Conservative party is promising, although the Tories are also promising big investment plans.

The Tory chancellor Sajid Javid said new rules which will allow government borrowing up to three per cent of GDP would allow the Tories to boost infrastructure borrowing of up to £20bn a year.

Mr Javid said: ’’The rules that I’ve set out today, which will allow us to borrow more responsibly … historically we have invested as a country about 1.8% of GDP a year in infrastructure. If you say add a percentage point, and which you comfortably can do that’s about an extra £20bn a year. Over a five-year period, you can easily add another £100bn. We will set out, both in our manifesto and then, if we win, in a future budget, much more detail about what this infrastructure investment looks like.’’

Commentators said the differences between the two parties were that the Tories planned on injecting tens of billions of investment, and claimed national debt will eventually fall, while Labour wanted to invest hundreds of billions with debt levels set to rise.