Abstract
The bombing in Manchester on 22 May 2017 was the worst terrorist attack in the UK since 2005. The country woke the next morning to shocking pictures of bloodied concert-goers being helped out of the Manchester Arena by members of the emergency services. The Prime Minister chaired an early morning meeting of COBR, the government’s emergency response committee. She then gave a statement outside Number 10, in which she described the attack as ‘among the worst terrorist incidents we have ever experienced in the United Kingdom’. She announced that she would be travelling to Manchester to meet with the Chief Constable and the newly elected Mayor of Greater Manchester, Andy Burnham, as well as the emergency services.
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Notes
- 1.
COBR stands for Cabinet Office Briefing Room, where the meetings take place. It is often referred to as COBRA, because there is a meeting room A, because cobra is an actual word and because it sounds more like something from James Bond—but Downing Street refer to it as COBR.
- 2.
In her statement, the Prime Minister added: ‘And although it is not the first time Manchester has suffered in this way, it is the worst attack the city has experienced, and the worst ever to hit the north of England.’ This reference to the IRA’s 1996 bombing of Manchester annoyed some in the Leader of the Opposition’s Office (LOTO) team, who felt it was a deliberate attempt to draw attention to Corbyn’s links with Irish republicanism.
- 3.
See Tim Ross and Tom McTague, Betting the House. Biteback, 2017, pp. 292–93.
- 4.
Tom Goodenough, ‘Ukip’s Tough Talk on Terror Comes with a Big Risk’, The Spectator, 25 May 2017, https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/ukips-tough-talk-terror-comes-big-risk.
- 5.
Tim Shipman, Fall Out. William Collins, 2017, p. 321; Ross and McTague, Betting the House, pp. 297–99.
- 6.
- 7.
The various arguments are well documented in Ross and McTague, Betting the House, pp. 284–85.
- 8.
There are, for example, details of this row in both Ross and McTague, Betting the House, pp. 289–90 and Shipman, Fall Out, pp. 322–23.
- 9.
See his Game Changer. Accent Press, 2018, p. 95.
- 10.
Although polling found Corbyn’s position to be widely shared, some focus groups did detect unease at the timing of the speech—and some candidates reported negative doorstep feedback. See, for example, Shipman, Fall Out, p. 328.
- 11.
Jess Staufenberg, ‘Conservatives’ Free Breakfast Pledge “Costed at Just 7p per Meal”’, Schools Week, 23 May 2017, https://schoolsweek.co.uk/conservatives-free-breakfast-pledge-costed-at-just-7p-per-meal.
- 12.
See Owen Bennett, ‘Labour “Breaks” Flagship Manifesto Pledge Not to Raise Taxes on Those Earning Less than £80k’, 6 June 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/labour-manifesto-tax-rises_uk_593666e0e4b0099e7faecf55.
- 13.
For 2015, see Philip Cowley and Dennis Kavanagh, The British General Election of 2015. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015, p. 189.
- 14.
- 15.
Georgina Lee, ‘Is Theresa May Six Seats from Losing the Election?’, Channel 4 News, 22 May 2017, https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/is-theresa-may-six-seats-from-losing-the-election.
- 16.
Tim Shipman has the idea coming from Patrick Heneghan (Fall Out, p. 343).
- 17.
They also predicted that the Conservatives would send Amber Rudd.
- 18.
Kemp is also quoted by Shipman (Fall Out, p. 346) saying that Corbyn is ‘totally unencumbered by self-doubt. Most opposition leaders worry about going too far or striking a balance. Corbyn just says “X is terrible. People are suffering. That’s why I want Y, which the rich will pay for” … If you don’t want to agonise about what your policies mean in practice, you can hoover up applause lines.’ This mirrors the remarks made by a Labour observer of the party’s leadership contests (see above, p. 72).
- 19.
In a pre-debate poll, YouGov found that the public wanted May to participate (by 56% to 20%).
- 20.
Michael A. Ashcroft, The Lost Majority. Biteback, 2017, p. 30.
- 21.
Joe Murphy, ‘UK General Election Polls: Jeremy Corbyn in Shock Surge as Labour Leader Now More Popular than Theresa May in London’, Evening Standard, 1 June 2017.
- 22.
See Roger Scully, ‘One Week to Go … The Latest Welsh Poll’, Cardiff University Blogs, 1 June 2017, https://blogs.cardiff.ac.uk/electionsinwales/2017/06/01/one-week-to-go-the-latest-welsh-poll. The Welsh poll confirmed that the rise in support seen in Wales earlier in May had not been a temporary blip, caused (for example) from sympathy following the death of the well-liked former First Minister Rhodri Morgan on 17 May.
- 23.
- 24.
We have corrected the multiple spelling errors.
- 25.
He added ‘but it was too late by that point’.
- 26.
Shipman, Fall Out, pp. 349–50.
- 27.
Alex Nunns, The Candidate. OR Books, pp. 360–61.
- 28.
This is moot. The one poll, by Survation conducted on 3 June, which asked about the programme found that respondents who had seen any of the programme or read about it saying they were slightly more likely to vote Labour as a result than not (by 36% to 24%) and less likely to vote Conservative (by 24% to 32%). The same poll found unhappiness with several of Corbyn’s responses, especially over the IRA, although it lacked similar questions about May’s answers.
- 29.
The claim that the Conservatives were reluctant to discuss arrangements is in Ross and McTague, Betting the House, pp. 361–62; the Crosby claim is in Shipman, Fall Out, p. 396. The latter also notes that even people within the Conservative campaign found it hard to get answers about the campaign suspension at the time, as the May/Hill/Timothy triumvirate were too busy coordinating the response to the attack, which may also explain the lack of response to Labour’s calls.
- 30.
In her statement, she said that ‘the two political parties have suspended our national campaigns for today’, although the temporary pause in campaigning also included the Liberal Democrats, the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Greens.
- 31.
Nunns, The Candidate, pp. 363–65.
- 32.
Less noticed in the mainstream media, but picked up online, was his linking of terrorism to British links with Saudi Arabia: ‘We do need to have some difficult conversations starting with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states that have funded and fuelled extremist ideology. It is no good Theresa May suppressing a report into the foreign funding of extremist groups. We have to get serious about cutting off the funding to these terror networks.’
- 33.
Amongst others, this was the view of Crosby (McTague and Ross, Betting the House, p. 369), but it was more widely shared. It is true that there had been some discussion of police cuts after Manchester, but it became more dominant after London Bridge.
- 34.
https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/871328428963901440?lang=en. Khan’s actual words were: ‘My message to Londoners and visitors to our great city is to be calm and vigilant today. You will see an increased police presence today, including armed officers and uniformed officers. There is no reason to be alarmed by this.’ The response from the Mayor’s office was that he had ‘more important things to do than respond to Donald Trump’s ill-informed tweet that deliberately takes out of context his remarks’, provoking yet more criticism from the US President (‘Pathetic excuse by London Mayor Sadiq Khan’). None of this was helpful to the Conservatives.
- 35.
Corbyn’s comment was a sloppy response to a question, which he had corrected even within the same interview. Asked whether he agreed with calls for the Prime Minister to resign, he replied that he did; when then asked ‘to be clear, you’d like to see her resign over this?’, he responded ‘we’ve got an election on Thursday and that’s perhaps the best opportunity to deal with it’.
- 36.
Murphy and Fisher were at all three meetings; Jon Trickett was at the first and Milne was at the last two.
- 37.
See, for example, Sam Coates and Lucy Fisher, ‘Labour Frontbench Fury as Diane Abbott Goes Rogue’, The Times, 3 June 2017.
- 38.
Even after she had stood down, several people in LOTO were worried that she would book herself onto programmes on election night.
- 39.
Anushka Asthana and Heather Stewart, ‘Diane Abbott Reveals Illness and Hits out at “Vicious” Tory Campaign’, The Guardian, 13 June 2017; and Scott Campbell, ‘Yet ANOTHER Blow for Under-Fire Diane Abbott as She is Fooled by Prankster Pretending to Be Jeremy Corbyn Adviser in Email Hoax’, Daily Mail, 6 June 2017.
- 40.
Liam Thorp and Amy Coles, ‘Jeremy Corbyn Given Rock Star Reception as He Declares Merseyside “Music Capital of UK”’, Liverpool Echo, 20 May 2017, https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/jeremy-corbyn-given-rock-star-13066662.
- 41.
The rally is sometimes referred to as occurring in his constituency, although the venue is in fact in the neighbouring Islington South & Finsbury, which Thornberry was defending.
- 42.
James Morris, ‘“Jez We Can!” Wild Support for Corbyn at Islington Homecoming Rally’, Islington Gazette, 7 June 2017, www.islingtongazette.co.uk/news/politics/jezza-s-coming-home-wild-support-for-corbyn-at-islington-homecoming-rally-1-5053061.
- 43.
In his Islington speech, Corbyn used ‘That in sleep’, although the original is ‘Which’.
- 44.
The percentage expecting a Conservative majority was down by eight points, while those expecting a Labour majority or a hung parliament were both up by five. The figures come from the Ashcroft post-election poll, which asked about people’s recollections of what they had expected before they heard the result—but if anything, we might expect such a poll to over-state the percentage saying they expected the hung parliament, given the well-documented tendency of people to alter their own memories to reconcile with inconvenient facts.
- 45.
As discussed below (p. 263), one company not in the British Polling Council published a poll showing Labour ahead by two points.
- 46.
Ewan MacAskill, ‘Jeremy Corbyn Gathers the Faithful for Upbeat Final Rally on Home Turf’, The Guardian, 8 June 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jun/08/jeremy-corbyn-gathers-the-faithful-for-upbeat-final-rally-on-home-turf.
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Cowley, P., Kavanagh, D. (2018). Horrors and Hopes. In: The British General Election of 2017. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95936-8_9
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