We are wrapping up today’s edition of Politics Live - here’s a brief summary of Tuesday’s highlights on the campaign trail:
Theresa May sought to relaunch her general election campaign with her strongest personal attack on Jeremy Corbyn, claiming the Labour leader’s performance in Monday night’s live television debate showed he would be “naked in the negotiating chamber” when Brexit talks start next month.
Illustration: Steve Bell
Jeremy Corbyn appeared to forget the cost of a key Labour childcare pledge during a tense interview on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour. He later apologised for not knowing the figure and defended presenter Emma Barnett’s right to ask him questions, saying it was “unacceptable” that she received antisemitic abuse on Twitter following the interview.
A second Scottish independence referendum should be held after the Brexit process is complete, Nicola Sturgeon has said, signalling a significant change in her party’s constitutional strategy.
The Conservative party is trying to use Monday’s TV leaders’ interviews as a chance to reboot its faltering election campaign with an online push focusing on Brexit and immigration.
Jeremy Corbyn ended the day with an interview on BBC1’s The One Show that focused on personality rather than policy, but was not joined by his wife in contrast with a similar appearance by Theresa May and her husband Philip earlier this month.
Scott D’Arcy of the Press Association has compiled this handy list of five things we learnt from Jeremy Corbyn’s interview on The One Show.
The Corbyn household’s chores are not split between “boy jobs and girl jobs”.
Asked if he and his wife Laura Alvarez divided housework along gender lines, in a similar way to Theresa May and her husband Philip, Corbyn simply shook his head.
The hedge outside his house used to be concrete.
“That’s an entrance to a garage and that was a lump of concrete. It was the devil’s own job to break up that concrete and turn it into a garden.”
He was a tearaway toddler.
After being shown a picture of himself as a toddler harnessed into his pram, Corbyn said: “I was a bit, sort of, free-spirited and I kept climbing out of the pram and running off.”
His parents were not pushy.
Naomi and David Corbyn may have met at a demonstration in support of the Spanish republican government, which at the time was under threat from Franco’s fascists, but he said their “strong views” were never imposed on him. “They never pushed the views down our throats at all. They were very much liberal thinkers - they believed people should think for themselves and discover themselves and a path for themselves.”
He was an academic failure.
Asked about having left Adams’ grammar school with two E grades at A-level, Corbyn said: “I was not an academically successful student. My mum was an ever-generous lady and I said, ‘well these are pretty poor, these results’, and she sort of looked at me and said, ‘they probably couldn’t read your writing’.”
He said he may have written “overlong answers to one question because I was quite interested in the subject and forgot the rest of it”.
A touch of non-Corbyn news for a moment. John Bercow could face opposition if he seeks to remain Commons Speaker after rowing back on his pledge to step down next year.
Bercow, who originally said he would serve nine years in the Speaker’s chair, said the snap election had persuaded him to change his mind. But Tory MP James Duddridge, a prominent critic of the Speaker, called Bercow a “self-serving parasite” who should not be returned to the role.
Bercow is standing for re-election in Buckingham and told Sky News that if returned to the Speaker’s chair by MPs after 8 June, he would like to continue for the full term of the parliament.
His critics on the Tory benches were angered earlier this year by the revelation that he voted remain in the EU referendum and by his handling of the row over President Donald Trump’s state visit.
Some had held off the idea of opposing his return to the role because of the expectation he would stand down. But Bercow, who was elected Speaker in 2009, said: “I had originally indicated an intention to serve for approximately nine years. If I may legitimately say so, I made that commitment eight years ago, it was before the Fixed-term Parliaments Act, it was before the EU referendum.
“I’m looking to the people of Buckingham to re-elect me as their member of parliament and then I will, if I am successful in that quest, ask the House whether it is willing to allow me to continue as Speaker for the 2017 parliament, which can run up to five years.”
And that’s it from Jeremy Corbyn on The One Show. The twitterati seem to be saying that Corbyn comes across as far warmer and nicer than Theresa May did.
The Mirror’s Kevin Maguire:
Corbyn more human alone on the One Show than Theresa and Philip May combined
Now we’re on to Corbyn’s love of manhole covers. Behind a picture of a Thomas Crapper cover is an image of the Labour leader with an Arsenal scarf. He sometimes referees under-10s matches and is asked whether they, or the parliamentary Labour party, are easier to control. No prizes for guessing his answer is the former.
Corbyn says his parents were liberal thinkers who brought up their children to think for themselves. “I try to carry on in that tradition.”
Despite going to grammar school, he only got two Es at A level. Realising he wasn’t going to get into university with those grades, he applied to VSO and went for a “weird interview” in which he was asked how he felt about chickens being slaughtered. Corbyn responded that he was a vegetarian but that if others wanted to eat meat that was fine by him.
Initially thinking he would be going to Malawi, he was sent to Jamaica instead.
Corbyn says his attitudes and principles haven’t really changed over the years. He enjoys meeting variety of people and learning from them: “You have to be prepared to listen to others.”
We learn that he was a Sunday paper boy in rural Shropshire and that his grandfather was a solicitor who became known as the “poor man’s lawyer” after moving to Ealing in west London.
Asked about media coverage of his family and personal affairs, Corbyn says that “intrusion in my life is not nice”, but adds “it goes with the territory”.
In case we needed reminding, co-host Ore Oduba reminds viewers that the interview, which continues after the show’s first film, will be about personality rather than policy.
Laura Alvarez is Jeremy Corbyn’s third wife. Photograph: Leon Neal/Getty Images
Jeremy Corbyn will appear on The One Show without his wife, Laura Alvarez, after choosing not to follow the example of Theresa and Philip May’s joint interview with the BBC1 programme.
Labour rejected the offer of a similar format because Corbyn maintains that his family is completely out of bounds during the general election campaign.
Alvarez, a Mexican human rights lawyer who runs a fairtrade coffee company, became Corbyn’s third wife in 2013 after they met some years before at a Latin American group.
The 48-year-old has rarely spoken to the press but told Vice News in a documentary of her pride in Corbyn’s response to David Cameron being rude about his dress sense. Alvarez said: “Jeremy stood very strong. It was amazing.”
The Labour leader very rarely speaks about his family life, acknowledging last month in the speech he was “averse to talking about myself”.
Philip May also has a relatively low profile but revealed a few personal details in the One Show interview, including that his wife had wanted to be prime minister for at least seven years.
Speaking about their division of the domestic labour, the prime minister also said there were “boy jobs and girl jobs”, with her husband taking the bins out when he was asked to do so. He said he made the tea “from time to time”.
Ken Loach, the award-winning director of films including I, Daniel Blake and Cathy Come Home, has made another Labour election broadcast. While the first featured Jeremy Corbyn, this time it is shadow chancellor John McDonnell’s turn to shine.
Loach said his new film was about the insecure, low-paid work that was “blighting the lives” of millions of Britons.
“This is a film about insecure, low-paid work, which is blighting the lives of millions of working class people. This has soared under the Conservatives, especially in the large parts of Britain which they have neglected and left behind, without jobs or investment. Labour’s programme will restore security to people’s lives, enabling everyone, regardless of their background, and all communities across our country, to thrive.”
In the broadcast being aired on BBC One at 6.55pm, McDonnell said Labour will not accept “foodbank Britain”, adding: “Everybody, whatever their contract, will have equal rights at work - sick pay, holiday pay and a real living wage. We will end zero hours contracts. No-one will be forced into bogus self-employment.”
If you want more Jeremy Corbyn, though, stay tuned after the broadcast for his interview on The One Show with Alex Jones and Ore Oduba. Chances are he may have an easier ride than the grilling he got on Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour this morning.
Jeremy Corbyn is yet to decide if he will take part in tomorrow’s BBC TV debate with other political leaders, at which the home secretary, Amber Rudd, will stand in for Theresa May.
Emily Thornberry, the shadow foreign secretary, is believed to have been lined up to represent Labour in the BBC election debate in Cambridge, but it is understood no final decision has been made and the official decision will be announced on Wednesday morning. The Labour leader has previously said he would not attend unless he was debating the prime minister.
Rudd will attend the BBC debate along with the Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron, Ukip’s Paul Nuttall, the Green party co-leader Caroline Lucas and Plaid Cymru’s Leanne Wood.
The SNP’s Nicola Sturgeon, has confirmed she will not attend and her party will be represented by her deputy, Angus Robertson.
Gary Gibbon has written an interesting post on Theresa May’s Brexit speech on his Channel 4 News blog. Here’s an extract.
To add to their queasiness, Theresa May conjured the image of Jeremy Corbyn going naked into the negotiating chamber. If you hadn’t got the image, she repeated it later in her address. She used the word “weak” to describe him three times in one sentence. That is the adjective that comes back particularly strongly in focus groups, rather then “leftwing” or “extreme”.
One Tory candidate from the region said he hadn’t seen anything of the wobble that the polls were talking about. He said: “I wouldn’t want to be anything other than a Tory in the West Midlands right now. She works better than Cameron here – the background, something about that I think. She’s a bit like Thatcher was in the West Midlands.”
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