Commons votes for early election as Corbyn hits campaign trail

Jeremy Corbyn just turned up at his first campaign event in Croydon. He was greeted by supporters, one embraced him and said “she loved him.”

He picked up the microphone and was getting ready to address them when it was pointed out that he was about to speak to his supporters with his back to a row of cameras, some taking the image live. His supporters will see it as an endearing moment. His critics will see it as pure amateurism.

He is mobbed by more adoring supporters in the street. Aides struggle to get him away to keep to schedule.

Earlier in the Commons, the Labour leader attacked Theresa May for ducking TV debates. There is not, as yet, much sign of that creating an insurmountable problem with voters for Theresa May.

The gamble she needs to pay off did just that handsomely. We were told by some constitutional experts that the Fixed Terms Parliament Act was an escapologists jacket even Houdini couldn’t slip off. In the end it rolled to the floor with the greatest of ease. A ninety minute debate and then only 13 votes against.

That just leaves the biggest gamble of the lot: the result. More polls are expected overnight. But there are no early signs that Theresa May is paying any electoral price for calling an election three years early.

Labour MPs I met after the vote on the election were in bad shape. One was slightly dazed. One pleaded with me not to visit his constituency and film there during the election as he didn’t want to be asked the question about whether he supported Jeremy Corbyn.

One Labour MP told me that the job under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership had been “agony, agony, agony.” He said many of his colleagues felt the same way. “I’m only standing so they don’t get one of their own in,” he said, making it clear that “them” was the current leadership.

The MP thought his chances of holding on were pretty slim because Ukip voters were heading into the Tory fold. Some of them were returning to their old political home but some were former Labour voters before they have their support to Ukip and would be first-time Tory voters. He hoped some Lib Dems who switched to the Tories in 2015 might go back to the Lib Dems and reduce the Tory pile. But his body language told you he didn’t believe it.