Last week, Jeremy Corbyn announced that a future Labour Government would pay 16 and 17 year-olds a £10 hourly minimum wage. A decade ago, when youth unemployment had soared under the last Labour Government, such a proposal would have been rightly criticised by everyone as stopping young people getting into work. Now, a decade later and with youth unemployment having halved under the Conservatives, such a proposal may be seen as eye-catching by those too young to remember the economic damage that Labour always do when in government. This ‘policy’ is of course a cynical bribe (with non-existent money) to get a few more votes and has no sound basis in economics whatsoever. As well as obviously hiking up youth unemployment, it seriously risks the viability of much sought-after apprenticeships. The numbers are just made up as they go along.
Locally, Jeremy Corbyn’s man in Crawley, the Council Leader who is also Labour’s Parliamentary candidate, appears to have a similar poor grasp of numbers, which rings alarm bells when having responsibility for the Council’s finances. In his Crawley Observer column last week when writing about Crawley’s local election results, he stated that “Labour won 47% of the popular vote to the Conservatives 41%, which in a General Election would mean Labour won the seat with a majority of over 3,000.”
This is completely untrue and is fake news being peddled as fact. This ‘major victory’ was being presented as Crawley’s validation of the Labour Administration at the town hall - the same administration that had permanently lost £1.3million from council house sales and whom had overspent by nearly £200,000 on a bungled IT project.
A quick check of the Council’s website will correctly confirm to everyone that Labour and Conservative both received 47% of the vote each overall in the recent local elections in Crawley. With the council area exactly matching the parliamentary constituency, this bogus claim of a Labour majority of over 3,000 from a tied vote comes straight from Jeremy Corbyn’s fantasy world, where everything is free and where printing money and making up numbers has no consequences.
Councillor Duncan Crow, Leader of Crawley Borough Council Conservative Group
15th May 2019