Veteran Southport journalist Martin Hovden writes: Tory bosses were today desperately trying to defuse the outcry over Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s cold and deliberate refusal to look at a picture of a four-year-old boy on a hospital floor.
Mr Johnson shocked viewers when they saw him pointedly avert his eyes when a TV reporter asked him to look at the picture of the boy, on the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mirror.
People were stunned by the PM’s lack of empathy and he caused even more derision when he grabbed the TV reporter’s phone and put it in his pocket.
Mr Johnson eventually apologised for the fact Leeds General Infirmary did not have a bed for the youngster. And today that apology was stressed to the media by Government ministers, sent out to explain the PM’s unsympathetic response.
Political commentators declared the incident as a “defining moment” in the current election campaign and said it may have an impact on non-Tory voters who were considering voting for Mr Johnson because of his Pro-Brexit stance.
And that’s exactly the situation in Southport where defending Conservative candidate Damien Moore is keen to recruit pro-Brexit supporters. He won in the 2017 election by nearly 3,000 votes – but his majority is at great risk from Labour’s very determined Liz Savage– a fact confirmed by Tory bosses in a secret memo revealed today in the Daily Telegraph (see my earlier report).
Southport is now a two-horse race following the collapse of Liberal Democrat support in the town, which until four years ago was a straight choice between the Tories and Lib Dems.
These were the 2017 results in Southport:
CONSERVATIVE 18,541 (38.66%)
LABOUR 15,627 (32.59%)
LIBERAL DEMOCRAT 12,661 (26.40%)
UKIP 1,127 (2.35%)
Whatever your view, don’t waste your vote this Thursday (December 12).
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