The Conservatve Party have been roundly mocked on social media for launching a bizarre and completely self-owning attack on the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn after he mistakenly underestimated the vast scale of the Tories’ failure to deliver on their promises for NHS GP numbers.
Yesterday, the Labour leader conducted an interview where he mistakenly said that the Tories had pledged to increase GP numbers by 1,600, and that they had fallen by 500.
However, almost immediately after finishing the claim, Corbyn asked the interviewer if they could re-film his answer on GP numbers as he had got his figures wrong.
Corbyn then went on to deliver the true figures, correctly stating that the Tories had actually promised 5,000 extra GPs and that in reality they fell by 1,600 – a far larger failure than he had previously stated.
However, rather than simply ignoring Mr Corbyn’s interview which clearly outined the Tories’ horrendous failure to deliver on their promises for the NHS, Boris Johnson’s media department decided to launch a bizarre and ridiculously ill-advised attack video attempting to mock the Labour leader for getting his numbers wrong.
You can watch the Tories’ astonishingly self-owning attack on Jeremy Corbyn below:
A nought is the difference between £1 billion and £10 billion. It may be a joke to Jeremy Corbyn but numbers matter – especially if it’s the cost of Labour’s risky economic policies on everybody.
You'll want to watch this one until the end. pic.twitter.com/3YtfpCvTcC
— Conservatives (@Conservatives) November 9, 2019
Unsurprisingly, given the fact that Mr Corbyn’s mistake was actually extremely kind on the Tories when compared to the reality of their broken promise, the stupifyingly self-defeating attack video was immediately mocked on social media by a vast array of journalists and social media users:
This is an actual video from the Tory party!
They're highlighting the fact that Corbyn temporarily underestimated the vast 6,600 GPs they missed their pledge by, as if Corbyn's the one who comes out looking bad!
They don't have a clue do they?pic.twitter.com/3f6YLI5yJq
— Another Angry Voice (@Angry_Voice) November 9, 2019
“Labour are idiots. They thought we’d promised 1600 new GPs and we ended with 500 fewer, when actually it was far worse: we promised 5000 and ended with 1600 fewer. Idiots!” https://t.co/O8bfka1Rv8
— David Schneider (@davidschneider) November 10, 2019
Corbyn: GPs have went down by 500
Aide: no, the figure is 1600
Tories: ha ha, look at Corbyn. He said we cut GPs by 500 but we actually cut them by 1600. Lol https://t.co/xgbJVN6XLQ— Antinimbyistische Aktion – ¡no pasaran! (@blueliberal1) November 10, 2019
The Tories promoting a video in which Jeremy Corbyn says GP numbers dropped by 500 in one year, but pointing out they ACTUALLY dropped by 1600 after the Tories promised 5000 more. Labour can’t come back from this. https://t.co/kU69floKxE
— The Poisonous Euros Atmosphere Fan (@DawnHFoster) November 10, 2019
Is it strange or strangely clever for Conservative PR to publicise the fall in GPs under them when they promised a rise? They did even worse than Corbyn said at first. So what’s worse – that he got an answer muddled or that they failed NHS patients? Am I missing something? https://t.co/gNeUcp4jiV
— Krishnan Guru-Murthy (@krishgm) November 9, 2019
This is quite literally the worst political video I've ever seen.
The Conservatives have genuinely put out a video highlighting Corbyn UNDERESTIMATING the scale of Tory cuts and then correcting himself.
Own goal doesn't even begin to describe it. This is truly laughable.
— Socialist Chris (@Socialist_Chris) November 10, 2019
You really got Corbyn there, he thought you’d only failed the NHS by a little when actually you failed it by a lot. A whole lot. Kudos.
— Ryan Evans (@DoNothing69) November 9, 2019
Even the Labour leader himself joined in mocking the Tories, tweeting a reply to their video which stated:
“Thanks @Conservatives for highlighting your broken promise.
GP numbers are currently 6,600 fewer than you promised, not 2,100. My mistake.
And by the way, there’s also a shortage of 43,000 nurses.”
https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/1193255268685139969?s=20
Despite what many right-wingers have attempted to claim, when it comes to social media, the Tories are clearly not getting any better. In fact, this may well be one of their worst self-owns to date.
