General Election 2019: Boris declines thrashing from former boss Andrew Neil

The day started poorly for the Conservatives. Clearly irritated by Boris Johnson’s determination to dodge an interview with him, Andrew Neil threw down the gauntlet on Thursday evening and the clip went viral throughout Friday. Noting that Johnson was the first ever party leader to shirk these interviews Neil declared an interview was still possible the theme of which would be “trust”. Given that “so many” see Johnson as “untrustworthy” would he really deliver on the promises he had made in the manifesto. Given that Johnson claiming he thought “the truth matters” drew laughter in the last leader’s debate this is a shot that hits home.

Johnson was once editor of the Spectator, before leaving his post to pursue new opportunities. Andrew Neil was then and remains now chairman of the Spectator magazine.

The message that Johnson cannot be trusted seems to be the Labour line as well. Last week Labour handed out leaked documents that they claimed showed Johnson had lied about his willingness to protect the NHS in any trade deal with the USA. Today, deploying this strategy once more, Corbyn unveiled leaked government documents assessing Brexit’s impact on Northern Ireland. These, Corbyn claimed, showed that Johnson had lied once again. There would indeed be customs checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland despite Johnson’s promises otherwise.

As with last week’s leaks these papers aren’t as revelatory as Labour claims. Some ministers had already been pushed to admit much of what was laid out in these documents. Labour’s strategy seems to be to force encourage scrutiny of the persistent gap between Johnson’s rhetoric and reality –  this seems a promising strategy. Will people buy Johnson rubbishing Labour’s claims as “complete nonsense” and Conservative party claims that the documents were an incomplete piece of “flash analysis”? This will, of course, depend on who people trust which is the crux of the issue.

Even if voters don’t believe Johnson’s response it may not change much. Since his early career Johnson has had a Teflon like quality to shrug of attacks which would have ended the careers of lesser blusterers. Voters are aware of these many scandals and many seem to have decided they support Johnson nonetheless. Given the general lack of trust of politicians Johnson’s sometimes nodding relationship with the truth might not seem unusual to many.

However, with many commentators predicting that the smallest of shifts among voters could be the difference between a Tory landslide and another hung parliament there will doubtless be trepidation in the Tory camp.

Still, today Johnson was himself a victim of the occasional gap between reality and reporting. Channel 4 circulated a video of Johnson discussing immigration which wrongly subtitled him as saying he wanted democratic control over the migration of “people of colour”. In fact, he had said “people of talent”. The mild imbroglio which lasted no longer than the morning on its own doesn’t amount to much but forms part of a wider pattern of this bad-tempered election – skirmishing between the media and politicians over each other’s reliability.

Bad temper also causedJohnson to cancel a stump speech in Rochester after protestors arrived. The cancellation was ostensibly on police advice. Those who dislike Johnson immediately started implying this was another example of him running away and claimed there were only five protestors. Those more sympathetic will find it reasonable to take police advice as the Conservatives claimed. Who do you trust?

The other theme of this election has of course been former political luminaries turning on their own parties. This trend continued today with Sir John Major, who has long been very publicly critical of Brexit. Appearing in a video released by Final Say, a second referendum campaign group, Major urged voters to back former Conservatives who had been expelled from the party over Brexit and were now standing as independents like David Gauke, Dominic Grieve, and Anne Milton. This follows a message by Tony Blair urging voters to vote tactically and not give Labour an outright majority.

Indeed, for Labour the intra-party civil war is if anything more intense as MPs who quietly despise their own leader are still in the party. Furthermore, as many in the party seem to anticipate another electoral defeat various factions are positioning themselves for the subsequent war for control of the party. Rebecca Long-Bailey, favoured as a successor by certain Corbynite factions and John McDonnell, reacting to leaks yesterday about anti-Semitism in Labour went on record today declaring that the party has “further to go” in combating antisemitism. The pitch seems to be to position herself as a less personally toxic version of Corbyn and as such the “further to go” wont involve any distancing herself from Corbyn himself.

All this sets the scene for the final leader’s debate between Johnson and Corbyn taking place on BBC One 20:30 this evening hosted by Nick Robinson. The debate itself looks likely to be a messy one. Robinson also seems keen to force both participants into awkward positions having expressed a desire for a debate which gives leaders as little scope as possible to stick to pre-prepared statements. Of course, the last thing either Johnson or Corbyn want to be confronted on is their past records so the scene is set for the debating equivalent of a Yakety Sax chase scene.