Jeremy Corbyn has hit back against Theresa May’s attempt to portray him as unpatriotic and soft on terrorism, condemning as “utterly ridiculous” and “offensive” her claim that he “doesn’t believe in Britain”.
As the campaign enters its final furlong, the Labour leader said he would not indulge in personal insults, despite the relentless mud-slinging from senior Tories – but accused the prime minister of exploiting her position to politicise the London Bridge terrorism attacks.
May sought to shore up Tory support with a series of attacks on the Labour leader last week, claiming in a speech on Brexit that he “doesn’t believe in Britain” days after saying he would be “alone and naked in the negotiating chamber” when Brexit talks begin on 19 June.
But Corbyn dismissed her remarks as “complete nonsense” in an interview with the Guardian. “I want us to play a constructive role in the world. I want us to have a decent and harmonious community in Britain. Does that make me anti-British in some way? It’s a ridiculous argument. It’s utterly ridiculous. Actually it’s offensive,” he said.
As he travelled across north-east England in Labour’s battlebus at the close of a month-long campaign that has seen May’s poll lead narrow sharply, Corbyn said that if he won on Thursday he would:
Contact Donald Trump and urge him to retract his “unacceptable” remarks about London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan.
Call Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron on Friday to kick off Brexit talks, saying his win would give him a mandate to negotiate tariff-free trade.
Set a date for a quick budget to implement key policies, including lifting the public sector pay cap.
Confront Saudi Arabia over its funding for terrorist groups.
May and her team have sought to refine their campaign message to the simple claim that she would make a better job of defending Britain’s interests in Brexit talks.
But Corbyn said he would strike a constructive tone with the German chancellor and French president on Friday morning, in contrast to a combative speech by May last month when she accused Brussels of meddling in Britain’s election.
“We will immediately guarantee rights of EU nationals living in Britain unilaterally,” Corbyn said. Of Merkel, he said: “I would hope she would make sure the same would be done for British nationals in her country and Europe but this is not a negotiation; we would do it anyway.”
He said he would invite the German chancellor to the Emirates stadium to watch his team Arsenal in an effort to develop a friendly relationship. “With Angela Merkel, we can discuss football and Brexit. I want to say to her that I like the German fanbase model [of running football clubs]. Then I’ll invite her to come and watch Arsenal.”
Dismissing fresh claims by the Conservatives that he is against “shoot-to-kill”, Corbyn said he supported the actions of armed police who shot dead the three London Bridge attackers on Saturday night. “They were defending themselves and defending innocent people. It was a proportionate response,” he said, describing their actions as “defensive shooting”.
He has remained sanguine in the face of the blows levelled against him throughout the election campaign, describing himself several times as “monsieur Zen”.
“There is a lot of negative campaigning against me, but the best way of dealing with a negative campaign is to be positive,” he said.
He deplored May’s decision to make what he called a “political speech” outside No 10 Downing Street on Sunday, setting out new policies on tackling terrorism just hours after the attack on London.
Unlike in the aftermath of the Manchester bombing a fortnight earlier, Corbyn said the Conservatives had refused to engage with Labour about whether to suspend election campaigning as a mark of respect and for how long.
“May chose to make a political speech in the middle of the day – which I thought was inappropriate. It should have waited until the evening as I did,” he said.
Corbyn caused a flurry of excitement on Monday after telling an ITV interviewer that he backed calls, including from David Cameron’s former adviser Steve Hilton, for the prime minister to resign over her record as home secretary in light the latest terrorist attacks.
But he played down his earlier remarks, blaming the furore on “the kind of excitement that happens during an election campaign, between different buses in different parts of the country, held together by the umbilical thread of a mobile phone signal”.
He said: “What I want is for her to be held to account. There are many very responsible people, fire service, police, many others, who are very concerned about how she performed as home secretary – presiding over 20,000 cuts to the police and the underfunding of the prisons service. The problems of the prisons have got to be addressed as well. There are a lot of people who in normal circumstances if she was still home secretary would be calling for her resignation. I’m just saying: hold her to account at the election on Thursday.”
Asked if he was going to win on Thursday, Corbyn did not hesitate before responding: “Yes.” He said the campaign had “changed completely” from the start, when Labour trailed the Tories by more than 20 points in the polls. “We are getting an enormous amount of cut through,” he said. “This is the Labour party at its best. The support is very, very strong.”
Corbyn has previously been pressed on whether he would resign if Labour lost, as Ed Miliband did in 2015. He said his team would “apologise for nothing” because they had done everything they could to try to win the election. He claimed the election boiled down to the Conservatives cutting services and leaving “lots of young people shortchanged and older people isolated and not cared for”.
Corbyn said he was keen to confront the US president about global warming. “One of my first conversations with Donald Trump will be about climate change,” he said, claiming that US support for the Paris climate agreement, which the president is planning to withdraw, was crucial.
“A lot of people worked very hard to get India and China on board. To have achieved that, it is very sad that the US president decides to remove them from it.” However, Corbyn said there was time to persuade Trump to reconsider. “It is going to take them a few years to withdraw anyway.”
Corbyn said a phone call to the US president, which he would make quickly after taking office if he won the election, would include a reaction to Trump’s misleading Twitter attack on Khan for telling people not to be alarmed by the presence of extra police on the streets after Saturday’s terrorist attack.
“I would ask him if he would kindly reconsider that,” the Labour leader said. “It is not acceptable to make those sort of remarks about someone who has been elected to be mayor of our biggest city.”
Corbyn described his own style of leadership as featuring two key traits: never to indulge in personal attacks and to reach out beyond those who originally supported his first attempt to take over at the helm of the party.