Andrew Sparrow's election briefing: debate blow for Lib Dems and SNP
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Version 0 of 1. Catch up with the campaign with our daily roundup Lib Dem-SNP legal bid to enter ITV debate fails An ITV election debate featuring just Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn is due to go ahead on Tuesday night after a legal challenge from the Lib Dems and the SNP failed. The two smaller parties both objected to their leaders not being included, but the high court concluded this was not a matter over which it could exercise judicial review and that, even if it could, ITV was not ignoring its impartiality obligations. The SNP says this means Scottish voters are being treated like second-class citizens. The ITV debate will be the first to feature just the PM and leader of the opposition and smaller parties argue this means voters are being given the impression that the election is a binary choice. There is some evidence to suggest that, in England at least, voters are already coming to this conclusion. Opinion polls may not be accurate predictors of final election outcomes, but they are seen as reliable guides to shifts in opinion during campaigns, and so far the GB-wide polls have been showing support for the two main parties rising since the campaign started, and the Liberal Democrats and the Brexit party seeing their vote squeezed (particularly the Brexit party, whose vote may even be collapsing.) Johnson, Corbyn and Swinson try to win over business Johnson, Corbyn and Jo Swinson all gave speeches at the CBI’s annual conference, which led to the event becoming something of an electoral beauty parade for the benefit of corporate Britain. And corporate Britain was not over-impressed. In a speech Carolyn Fairbairn, the CBI director general, said extremists on the right and the left in politics were causing “great harm to the economy”. My colleague Phillip Inman, economics editor of the Observer, says it was Swinson who got the best reception. After her speech Paul Drechsler, a former CBI president, posted this on Twitter. Boris Johnson has told business leaders he will shelve a planned cut in corporation tax, claiming he would put £6bn into public services instead. He did not commit to ringfencing the money for the NHS, but he strongly implied this was where much of it was going. He told his audience: This surprise move neutralises the Labour announcement last week to beef up spending on the NHS - also to tune of £6bn a year. In a Guardian fact check, my colleague Richard Partington explains that Johnson’s announcement also undercuts frequent Tory claims that cutting the headline rate of corporation tax is the best way to increase total revenue from it. Swinson has confirmed that the Lib Dems would abolish business rates, and replace them with a commercial landowner levy. This policy would “shift the burden from the tenant to the landlord so that we can breathe new life into our high streets”, she told the CBI. Corbyn told the CBI that Labour’s nationalisation programme does not represent a return to the failed policies of the past. He told the conference: Meanwhile Labour has softened its pledge to find a path to net zero carbon emissions by 2030 after unions pushed for a target of significant progress rather than a firm commitment. Jennifer Arcuri, the US businesswoman at the centre of conflict of interest allegations against Boris Johnson, has said she warned the prime minister last week that she would speak out against him after he repeatedly refused to take her calls. Extinction Rebellion activists have begun hunger strikes outside a number of UK political party headquarters to push for more robust policies on tackling the climate emergency in the general election. Sign up here to receive Andrew Sparrow’s election briefing direct to your email inbox every weekday. If you’re using the Guardian app and would like a daily alert to Andrew Sparrow’s election briefing, click here and select “get notifications”. |