13 – Tragedy Sparks Hope

“So why don’t we go,
Somewhere only we know?”
Rice-Oxley, Chaplin and Hughes, sung by Lily Allen¹

There was chaos on all the roads approaching London Bridge. Karie Murphy was on her way out when she saw the trouble ahead. The Champions League final had been played in Cardiff that evening and, at first, she thought it was rowdy football fans who had been watching in the local pubs. It was soon obvious that it was something much more serious.

Once back in her flat, she made some calls. It would be an hour or so before the full bloody reality of it would be clear. By then, Jeremy was on standby to make a statement and she had started liaising with the other parties. But she could not get through to anyone at Downing Street or the Conservative campaign headquarters. No one was picking up.

At 12.50am, the Unite branch secretary at Guy’s Hospital phoned her. “I thought you would want to know,” he said. “Kirsty is dead.” Karie could hardly speak: Kirsty Boden was the nurse who looked after her on the recovery ward when she donated a kidney two years earlier. The 28-year-old Australian was out with friends at a pub near London Bridge when the attack happened. She was killed after running towards danger to see if she could help the people who had been hit by the van. As she knelt over someone, she was stabbed herself.

As the night went on, the details of the attack became clearer. Seven people were confirmed dead and many more were injured. The three perpetrators had been shot dead by police. But, even by the time of the 7am call, there had still been no communication with Downing Street. The Tories had unilaterally announced a suspension of campaigning and were not answering Karie’s calls. There was, however, agreement with the Liberal Democrats and Greens on a 12-hour suspension of the national campaigning, with local activity allowed to continue.

By 8.44am, we had put out a statement from Jeremy expressing his shock and horror at the attacks. It continued:

“My thoughts are with the families and friends of those who have died and the many who have been injured. Today, we will all grieve for their loss. I would like to thank the police and emergency services for their bravery and professionalism in acting to save lives and deal with these appalling acts of terrorism, as well as NHS staff and members of the public who sought to protect others.

“The Labour party will be suspending national campaigning until this evening, after consultations with other parties, as a mark of respect for those who have died and suffered injury. Those who wish to harm our people, divide our communities and attack our democracy will not succeed. We will stand together to defend our common values of solidarity, humanity and justice, and will not allow terrorists to derail our democratic process.”

It was a non-partisan statement consistent with our approach to the Manchester attack. May, however, was preparing to sing from a very different hymn sheet. With all the polls in the Sunday papers showing a further narrowing of their lead – and the Survation one suggesting it was down to only one point – the Tory campaign was about to abandon what little dignity it had left. Instead of being prime ministerial, May chose to use a mid-morning statement in Downing Street – her first public appearance after the attack – to announce a politically--charged set of proposals for regulation of the Internet, “stamping out extremism” in the public sector, giving the police “all the powers they need” and increasing “the length of custodial sentences for terrorist-related offences – even apparently less serious offences.”

Mother Theresa had shed her caring skin and revealed the authoritarian inner-self. Signing off a billboard campaign saying, “In the UK illegally? Go home or face arrest” – as she did as home secretary – was only a foretaste of how far she could go. These proposals, though lacking in any detail, were a recipe for a form of McCarthyism. So loosely is the word ‘extremist’ bandied about, the implication was that anyone with an alternative view on regime-change wars or how to fight ISIS could lose their jobs or even go to prison.

But there were other flaws: firstly, May had actually been responsible for cutting police numbers, making her toughness sound hollow and hypocritical; and secondly, it had already been revealed that the perpetrator of the Manchester attack was known to the intelligence services – there were therefore questions to ask about operational failures before discussing purges in the public sector and new police powers.

An hour or so later, on Radio 4’s World This Weekend, Emily Thornberry wisely resisted being pushed by Mark Mardell into commenting on the substance of May’s proposals. After Emily said she did not want to be “dragged into plans at this stage” so soon after the attack, Mardell pressed her on whether or not there was too much tolerance of ‘extremism’ in Britain.

Emily: Of course, I agree that there is too much extremism in Britain and it needs to be tackled. Exactly how that is, is something that is certainly open to debate and discussion. None of the things which I understand she is proposing in her four-point plan are immediate steps and so I regret the timing of it.

Mardell: You think she was being too political? Why do you regret the timing?

Emily: Because there is an agreement between the parties that there would not be party political campaigning until this evening or tomorrow.

Mardell: And do you regard what she said as party political campaigning?

Emily: I think it is drawing us into a debate. I think there is time enough to discuss these issues. As I say I don’t think anything that she is proposing is anything that needs to be or will be dealt with tomorrow. I don’t think there is anything which is immediate steps that she is putting forward. And obviously if it was then that would be a different matter. But, you know, to come out on to the steps of Downing Street immediately in the aftermath of a terrible outrage like this was not something that would be expected.

Mardell: Do you think she has broken the agreement that you’ve spoken of?

Emily: I just simply regret the approach that she has taken.

Emily had handled difficult media interviews well throughout the election, but this was probably her best moment – a masterclass in not getting drawn. We had already decided that Jeremy would devote a large part of a speech scheduled for that evening in Carlisle to tackling the meat of the security issue again. In batting Mardell’s questions away, Emily was holding our line that national campaigning had been suspended until then, out of respect for the London Bridge victims and their families.

The Carlisle speech, which had been due to be on the economy, was being re-worked by the two Andrews and Seumas as Emily was speaking. My own day was about to go in a different, though not unrelated, direction. Just after 3pm that afternoon, John McDonnell texted me to say the BBC website was still using a clip from an old Laura Kuenssberg interview with Jeremy, conducted a few days after terrorist attacks at the Stade de France and the Bataclan theatre in Paris had left 130 people dead.² It was, he pointed out, the clip that had been used in a News at Six report nearly two years earlier that the BBC Trust ruled inaccurate and a breach of impartiality because it gave the false impression that Jeremy was opposed to the use of lethal force in such circumstances.³

I could tell from his texts that John was incandescent. When I looked at the webpage, I could see why. Not only had they used a clip from the old interview, the accompanying text said Jeremy was “not happy” with a shoot-to-kill policy “in the event of” a terror attack on Britain’s streets. The copy was completely at odds with the BBC Trust ruling and the position that Jeremy had often reiterated that he supported the use of whatever force was necessary to save lives. To make matters worse, that page was the top trending item on the BBC website and being shared widely across social media by supporters of the Tories. By 4.16pm, the Sun’s website was running a story about the conveniently rediscovered clip under the headline: “Jez gun row – Video of Corbyn saying he opposes shoot-to-kill policy rises to the top of BBC website in wake of London attack.”

I phoned Katy Searle at the BBC immediately to lodge our objections and say we were taking legal advice. In a written reply an hour or so later, she said the complaint upheld by the Trust was “not against the online story, but against the broadcast piece” and that “online material is rarely taken down as it forms part of the archive.” She said she had taken advice herself and was “happy that we have broken no election rules.”

This did nothing to quench the red-hot blaze of anger inside the Labour party. After discussions with John, Iain McNicol and Shami Chakrabarti, it was agreed that we should set up a conference call that evening to get a barrister’s opinion on our options. In the meantime, Jeremy was on his feet in Carlisle giving a speech that, in the febrile atmosphere of the day and with polling stations opening in less than 90 hours, would be scrutinised word by word.

After expressing “love and solidarity” to the families and friends of those who have died and been injured, and paying tribute to the emergence services and everyone who acted selflessly to save lives, Jeremy said:

“The violence and brutality of last night’s attack, the targeting of innocent people going about their ordinary business is a depravity familiar from similar attacks in Manchester, across Europe, the Middle East and beyond. That is why we are ready to consider whatever proposals may be brought forward by the police and security services more effectively to deal with the terrorist threat.

“If Labour is elected I will commission a report from the security services on Friday on the changing nature of the terrorist threat. Our priority must be public safety and I will take whatever action is necessary and effective to protect the security of our people and our country. That includes full authority for the police to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life as they did last night and as they did in Westminster in March.

“You cannot protect the public on the cheap – the police and security services must get the resources they need, not 20,000 police cuts. Theresa May was warned by the Police Federation but she accused them of ‘crying wolf’. As Labour has set out in our manifesto, we will recruit another 10,000 new police officers, including more armed police who need to be properly rewarded as well as a thousand more security services’ staff to support our communities and help keep us safe.”

Jeremy went on to talk about why the election must go ahead and the choices the British people face on June 8. Then he returned to his main theme with a direct reference to May’s comment that morning that “difficult conversations” had to take place on extremism.

“And, yes, 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, including ISIS here and in the Middle East. No government can prevent every attack, sometimes the most depraved and determined will get through, but the responsibility of government is to do everything we can to minimise the risk.”

The speech was crystal clear: Jeremy said he would give “full authority for the police to use whatever force is necessary to protect and save life.” At the same time, he put May on the spot over police cuts and links with Saudi Arabia, using her ‘difficult conversations’ theme to turn the question round.

Looking back on the campaign, I realise this was Jeremy’s ‘Philadelphia moment’. The Chatham House speech had laid the foundations on security and the post Manchester speech built on them, but Carlisle was the moment when everything hung in the balance. It is important to be prepared for those situations, but you can’t predict when they are going to happen. You simply have to know that ‘Philadelphia moments’ exist, and rise to the challenge when they come along. The essence of it is that, when faced with a crisis that poses questions that could make or break a campaign, you not only choose to deal with the issues head on but you do it, as Obama did in 2008, on your own terms and with integrity.

Spectator columnist Stephen Daisley described Jeremy’s Carlisle speech as “the best of the campaign so far,”⁴ and much of the media was leading with the line that “you can’t protect the public on the cheap.”⁵ The Sun, on the other hand, had to square Jeremy’s words with its previous misrepresentations by calling it “a dramatic Corbyn U-turn on shoot-to-kill”. The Sun claimed that, in saying the police should use “whatever force is necessary” to protect lives, Jeremy was going back on his 2015 comment that he was “not happy with a shoot-to-kill policy in general.”⁶

Note the words ‘in general’. What the BBC Trust’s ruling hinged on was whether Jeremy had been responding to a question about shoot-to-kill generally or in the context of an immediate threat to life specifically. In the News at Six report, Laura Kuenssberg’s scripted voice-over said she had asked Jeremy whether or not he would be happy for British officers to pull the trigger in the event of a Paris style attack. However, when the Trust examined the full interview, they found the question actually put was more widely framed:

“Would you be happy to order people – police or military – to shoot-to-kill on Britain’s streets?”

The Trust therefore ruled that, while there was no deliberate attempt to mislead, “the BBC was wrong to present an answer Mr Corbyn had given to a question about ‘shoot-to-kill’ as though it were his answer to a question he had not in fact been asked.”⁷

The distinction between shoot-to-kill ‘in general’ and the police using lethal force when lives are at risk is not a semantic one. It is critical because the latter is legal and the former is not. That Sunday evening, it was good to have the benefit of Shami Chakrabarti’s advice. Ahead of the conference call at 10.30pm, she circulated an internal note making the legal position on shoot-to-kill clear. Opening with my favourite legal phrase, she said:

“For the absolute avoidance of doubt, Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour Party, UK criminal and human rights law all support the use of necessary lethal force in the circumstances of a terrorist attack in order to protect innocent lives. This is different from what may be described as ‘shoot-to-kill policies’… whereby suspected members of terrorist groups are deliberately killed when they might have been investigated and /or arrested. Here the use of lethal force is contrary to law.”

Many journalists – either through ignorance or bias – were conflating two entirely different questions. Any coverage saying Jeremy had changed his view was therefore based on a false premise. Finding a remedy, however, for the BBC’s continuing misrepresentation of Jeremy’s views was more complicated. The 10.30pm call discussed the potential for a libel action, a formal complaint to the BBC and a referral of the issue to the police under Section 106 of the Representation of the People’s Act.

The latter was by a long way the most drastic of the options. The Act makes it a criminal offence to publish “any false statement of fact in relation to the candidate’s personal character or conduct” unless the person has “reasonable grounds for believing, and did believe, that statement to be true.” In saying that Jeremy would not be happy with the police shooting to kill “if there was a terror attack on Britain’s streets,” the BBC’s website was, to my mind, saying something about Jeremy’s character, with implications for his fitness for office, that it knew absolutely to be untrue because of the Trust’s clear ruling. However, we were all conscious of the far-reaching consequences of using Section 106, both in its impact on the already toxic election battle and in its potential for restricting free speech longer term. It was not a course of action we could recommend without further advice and discussion. A formal written complaint to the BBC was, however, a different matter, and we decided to go ahead with that without delay.

Over the next hour or so, a letter was prepared, which Gerald Shamash sent to James Harding, the BBC’s head of news, at 12.27am on Monday, June 5. After summarising the facts, it said we were “very concerned about the damage this inaccurate content will do to Mr Corbyn’s reputation and the impact it may have on the outcome of the general election.” It asked the BBC to remove the content immediately and publish a correction.

The shoot-to-kill issue was so sensitive and urgent that I had to abandon my plan to return to London that Sunday evening. It was not something I could break away from or deal with on a train. To complicate matters, I also had to rearrange holiday plans made earlier in the year. My wife and I were booked on a flight to Los Angeles that Wednesday to spend a few weeks with our son and his family in California. I had decided to delay my departure the moment the election was called – in fact, Jeremy sent a nice letter to my eldest granddaughter, Ilana, apologising in advance for me missing her fifth birthday on the Sunday after polling day – but I could not change the flight until I was clearer about our chances of winning. Having reached the point where I could not prevaricate any longer, and given how close some of the polls were, I decided I should be around long enough to help out if Jeremy was called on to form a government – I delayed going to the US until Wednesday, June 14.

On the Monday morning, the shoot-to-kill controversy was gathering pace. Still in Cardiff, I phoned Karie to discuss the situation. We agreed to take further advice from Martin Howe, a solicitor who had acted for Jeremy previously. The overnight letter had formally registered our complaint, but we wanted Martin to put together a more comprehensive argument based on the BBC Trust ruling and the BBC’s editorial guidelines.

That morning, the campaign also arranged – at very short notice – a press conference at midday to push our message that the Tories had put austerity ahead of safety by cutting police numbers. Karie and the team had lined up the unions representing workers in the emergency services to speak and arranged for Keir Starmer to chair.

The Tories, meanwhile, were still trying to damage Jeremy on shoot-to-kill. At 12.14pm, they did Laura Kuenssberg a grave disservice by posting a clip from her 2015 interview on the official Conservative party Twitter feed with a tweet saying:

“The shoot-to-kill policy saves lives – Jeremy Corbyn opposes it. Retweet to let everyone know.”

And thousands did, helping to keep the topic trending on both Twitter and the BBC website.

The BBC had not, at that stage, responded to our complaint. While they were considering it, one of their political correspondents was interviewing Jeremy for a routine ‘pool clip’ that would be shared with the other broadcasters. Afterwards, Sian Jones, LOTO’s head of media, who was with Jeremy at the time, alerted me to questions she thought sounded like they might have been inspired by the BBC’s lawyers. When I saw the transcript, I could see her point:

Alex Forsyth, BBC: You said in November 2015 that you were not happy with a shoot-to-kill policy. Last night you said you back the police using all reasonable force. Were you wrong in 2015?

Jeremy: What I said in 2015 was taken totally out of context, and there was a complaint made and the complaint was upheld by the BBC.

Forsyth: I’ve got your words. These are your words. ‘I’m not happy with a shoot-to-kill policy in general. I think it’s quite dangerous and it can often be counter-productive.’ That was your view in 2015. What’s your view now?

Jeremy: My view has not changed. In a defensive position, where security of the individuals is at stake, then what happened in Westminster, what happened over the weekend is about saving people’s lives.

Forsyth: So, you back shoot-to-kill now?

Jeremy: What I back is a police force that is adequately prepared and able to deal with a terrorist attack, such as we had on Saturday where they had to take the necessary action.

Forsyth: So, you were wrong in 2015? I just want to be clear again.

Jeremy: Let’s be very, very clear because the complaint made to your organisation, the BBC, was upheld by your own trust at that time.

Forsyth: You said I’m not happy with shoot-to-kill. I think it’s quite dangerous. Have you changed your mind?

Jeremy: I’ve not changed my mind. What I said was I wanted our police to be able to act in a defensive capacity. I don’t want, nobody wants the police going out shooting people. They don’t want to do it. Nobody wants to do it. In the situation they faced at the weekend, or faced at Westminster, they took the necessary action. And I made it very clear that we want more police on the streets, including police that can take the necessary action to protect and save life.

Notice how Alex Forsyth used the term ‘shoot-to-kill’ without any qualification three times in her questions, but added ‘in general’ only on the one occasion she quoted what Jeremy had actually said in 2015. It was extraordinary – after two years of controversy about this – that BBC journalists were still confusing an unlawful general shoot-to-kill policy with the lawful use of “all reasonable force to save lives.”

Whether this cross examination was influenced by lawyers eager to catch Jeremy out, or was simply a case of a journalist not understanding the issue is hard to say. It may be that everyone involved in this at the BBC was overcome by an urge to vindicate Laura Kuenssberg’s original report. In doing so, however, they were recycling the same error as if the technicality of the BBC Trust’s ruling being specific to the News at Six item meant it did not provide a precedent for reporting of Jeremy’s views going forward. Anyone who reads the ruling will see that it made the general point that the BBC has to take particular care to achieve a high standard of accuracy when reporting “matters of considerable importance.” The Trust said:

“The United Kingdom’s response in the event of a Paris-style attack here was a crucial question at a time of extreme national concern. The audience would have an expectation that a scripted item on one of the BBC’s prime time television news programmes on such a day would reflect with the greatest accuracy what the Leader of the Opposition had said on the matter.”⁸

The Trust was very clear that the question of authorising the police to shoot-to-kill when terrorists are “in the act of killing or threatening to kill civilians” had not in fact been put to Jeremy at all. Yet the entire BBC website copy, and Alex Forsyth’s questions, were based on the premise it had been. Whether intentional or not, this failure to accept the implications of Trust’s ruling had the effect of aiding the Tories and misleading the public on “a crucial question at a time of extreme national concern.”

That evening, having arrived at a hotel near Southside, where I would stay for the rest of the campaign, I discovered Donald Trump had entered the fray with an attack on Sadiq Khan in a tweet saying:

“Pathetic excuse by London Mayor who had to think fast on his ‘no reason to be alarmed’ statement. MSM⁹ is working hard to sell it.”

In reply, Jack Bond had put out a tweet on Jeremy’s behalf, which quoted Trump’s post, saying:

“Sadiq Khan has spoken for London and our country in standing up to hate. That is how we stop terrorists winning, not by promoting division.”

As a measure of the relative reach of the two parties on social media, Jeremy’s post supporting Sadiq was retweeted more than 23,000 times, generating 4.3 million ‘impressions’, compared to roughly 4,500 retweets for the Tory shoot-to-kill post earlier in the day.

In the final days of the campaign, with attacks on us intensifying, online channels for reaching voters directly had become more important than ever. Our video post on the same day saying “you cannot protect communities on the cheap or by disregarding the opinions of the police” was viewed more than 3 million times on Facebook and Twitter. We had also bought ‘shoot-to-kill’ on Google AdWords so that people using that search term would be offered a link to Jeremy’s Carlisle speech.

At 9.10am on the Tuesday of the final week of the campaign, Martin Howe sent James Harding, director of news and current affairs at the BBC, a letter outlining our objections to the website content. When the reply came at 4.27pm that afternoon, it simply reiterated the previous argument that the Trust’s ruling applied only to the News at Six reports and insisted there was nothing wrong with the other material.

In the intervening period, Seumas and I had discussed whether or not to release our letter to the media. These are finely judged tactical questions, and there are always arguments both ways. Seumas was worried about the legal challenge becoming the story and fueling more bad coverage on shoot-to-kill. I had initially leaned towards releasing the letter feeling that, as we had already taken such a big hit on the issue, there could only be an upside to showing how strongly we rejected the way Jeremy’s views had been portrayed. By Tuesday afternoon, however, the shoot-to-kill story was no longer featuring among the five ‘most watched’ items on the BBC news website, and none of us wanted to risk reviving it. Besides, the campaign was about to enter its final 36 hours with the staging of six simultaneous rallies across Britain, followed the next day by Jeremy’s final sweep through the country from Glasgow to his own constituency of Islington North with four stops en route.

At that stage, the overwhelming priority was to enthuse our supporters to ‘get out the vote’ with a positive message of hope, and we had a few things in our back pocket. Ken Loach had saved the best until last with the fifth – and his third – party political broadcast of the campaign on the NHS. It told the story of what under-funding means for patients through the voices of health workers struggling with it day to day. Towards the end, consultant paediatrician Tony O’Sullivan broke down after talking about a child with severe mental health problems needing a hospital bed and the nearest one being 100 miles away. When I viewed it with Ken and his team in the editing suite a few days beforehand, no one could speak for a moment afterwards. I am sure most of the 8 million viewers who watched it on television felt the same.

And then there was our campaign video. This was Seumas’ pet project. He wanted something like the Bernie Sanders campaign video, which had Simon and Garfunkel’s America accompanying a montage of clips of people and rallies. After persuading him that Jerusalem was not quite right for our equivalent, we had given it to a team to come up with some suggestions and plan whatever new filming was needed. My input was marginal. On one occasion Laura Murray, who was coordinating the project, found her father, Andrew, and me and asked us to listen to some options for the music. Later she posted on WhatsApp:

“Dad and Steve weren’t super helpful… But they thought the Lily song would have more broad appeal.”

The view of the old fogies was shared by most people involved – so, Somewhere Only We Know was chosen. The final video, which we launched online at 2pm the day before polling, captured the mood and hopes of the campaign perfectly. It was viewed 2.4 million times on Facebook and Twitter.

The Tuesday evening rallies were also a huge success. Jeremy spoke in Birmingham with a celebrity and musical line-up that included Steve Coogan, Ben Elton, Maxine Peake, Wolf Alice, Clean Bandit and Reverend and the Makers. The other rallies in Barry, Brighton, Glasgow, Croydon and Warrington had their own speakers and performers, but Jeremy’s speech was transmitted live by satellite to all the venues. Those simultaneous rallies were the crowning achievement of our brilliant events team. Altogether more than 15,000 supporters turned up at the six venues. On Facebook, the Birmingham rally was seen by another 2 million people after being shared more than 40,000 times. In a matter of hours, 85,000 people had ‘liked’ or ‘loved’ it. Chloe Green, the social media manager at Southside, described it as Labour’s “most successful piece of content of all time,” and heaped praise on the LOTO-Southside events teams, saying:

“I got a glimpse of just how much work goes into an event and I am infinitely impressed and in awe. It looked sensational.”

Behind the scenes, however, a new drama was unfolding. In a heart to heart with Karie, Diane Abbott had revealed – as the rallies were taking place – that she had Type 2 diabetes, which she was struggling to control. The intensity of the campaign had made it hard to manage her diet and medication. Now she was facing unimaginable pressure: the Tory vilification of her that started before the London Bridge attack was escalating by the hour. Karie felt it would be best for her and the campaign if she took a break.

Early Wednesday morning, Karie called to brief me to be ready to inform the media, once she and Seumas had discussed the situation with Jeremy. My feeling – not having spoken to Diane – was that the Tories were using her as a punchbag, and, if it was putting her health at risk, she should step aside. It would leave them throwing their fists at thin air.

After getting the nod from Seumas, I gave the story to Kevin Maguire at the Mirror and Laura Kuenssberg at the BBC, confident that both would handle an issue of that nature sensitively. (Laura may seem a counter-intuitive choice given the wrangle with the BBC over shoot-to-kill, but I saw that as an institutional issue and did not hold her personally responsible for the way her 2015 material was now being misused). Fifteen minutes later, at 8.57am, the Labour press office issued a one sentence statement saying Jeremy had asked Lyn Brown to stand in for Diane as shadow home secretary for the period of her ill health.

Lyn is the MP for West Ham and was in Diane’s team as shadow minister for policing. She would be the first to admit that her profile is so low she would not register in a name recognition poll. When I phoned her that morning she was very reticent about the whole situation. She said she was “very fond” of Diane and described herself as “a working class girl who wasn’t even supposed to be an MP, never mind shadow home secretary.” This was a horrible situation for everyone, and it makes me angry even now to think about what Diane must have gone through in that election. But I think it was in the best interests of the campaign that she stepped aside at that point. Lyn was a real trooper for stepping in, and Diane deserves enormous respect for handling the situation with such dignity and discipline.

The polls on the final day were all over the place. Survation had Labour and the Tories only one point apart for the second time in four days. YouGov, whose poll the previous week had narrowed the gap to three-points and provoked ridicule from May’s pollster, Jim Messina,¹⁰ was now suggesting the Tories had opened up a seven-point lead. Late in the afternoon, Patrick Heneghan scurried into Jeremy’s room where Andrew Murray and I were working to say a BMG poll for the Glasgow Herald was forecasting a 46 to 33 per cent win for the Tories. Andrew and I looked at each other and shrugged. We had not taken much notice of BMG throughout the campaign, why start now?¹¹

That evening, as Jeremy was arriving in Islington for his final rally, the digital team had everything set up for polling day. For the first time in the UK, Labour had built a polling station finder and lined up a social media advertising campaign targeted at groups who might need a bit of a push to turn out. Over the next 24 hours, it would be visited by 1.24 million people, 61 per cent of the traffic coming from Snapchat.

When I left, Southside was nearly deserted. Many of the staff were out in constituencies around the country. Others had gone to hear Jeremy speak in Islington. As I walked back to my hotel, I thought we had done everything we could – and definitely enough to give the Tories a fright – but I did not appreciate then quite how different Britain would seem in 24 hours’ time. As Jeremy would say on election night: politics has changed, and won’t be put back into the box it was in.

¹ Lily Allen gave permission for her cover of ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ to be used by Labour for its 2017 general election campaign video. The song was written by Tim Rice-Oxley, Tom Chaplin and Richard Hughes.

² The perpetrators of the Paris attacks on 13.11.2015 were shot or blew themselves up.

³ BBC Trust, Editorial Standards Findings, Appeals to the Trust and other editorial issues considered by the Editorial Standards Committee; September, November 2016 and January 2017, issued January 2017; News at Six, BBC One, 6.11.2015.

⁴ Stephen Daisley, ‘Jeremy Corbyn has just given the best speech of the election campaign so far,’ the Spectator website, 4.6.2017.

⁵ Laura Kuenssberg, ‘London attack: Corbyn criticises Tories in terror speech,’ BBC, 4.6.2017.

⁶ Harry Cole and Alain Tolhurst, ‘Jeremy Corbyn U-turns on his long-held concerns over police shoot-to-kill policy in response to London Bridge attack,’ the Sun, 4.6.2017.

⁷ BBC Trust, Editorial Standards Findings; Appeals to the Trust and other editorial issues considered by the Editorial Standards Committee; September, November 2016 and January 2017, issued January 2017; News at Six, BBC One, 6.11.2015, p18.

⁸ BBC Trust, Editorial Standards Findings, Appeals to the Trust and other editorial issues considered by the Editorial Standards Committee; September, November 2016 and January 2017, issued January 2017; News at Six, BBC One, 6.11.2015, p18.

⁹ Shorthand for ‘mainstream media.’

¹⁰ Jim Messina tweeted (31.5.2017): ‘Spent the day laughing at yet another poll from YouGov.’

¹¹ UK Polling Report.