YP Comment: Corbyn's sums need to add up. Labour and its leaked manifesto

Jeremy Corbyn was campaigning in Garforth, and other parts of Yorkshire, when his draft manifesto was leaked.

Irrespective of the motives of the offical concerned, this apparent breakdown in discipline and collective responsibility points to irreconcilable differences in Labour’s high command about strategy. Any deviation at next week’s launch from this text will be portrayed as a split.

Mr Corbyn’s worries do not end here. The socialist manifesto is riddled with inconsistencies – it says Labour will deliver Brexit but warns “that leaving the EU with ‘no deal’ is the worst possible deal for Britain”.

Then there is national security. Though the party commits itself to the renewal of the Trident nuclear deterrent which goes against Mr Corbyn’s long-held pacifism, it says “any prime minister should be extremely cautious about ordering the use of weapons of mass destruction”.

And then there’s the small matter of the cost. Not one of these profligate proposals, like the commitment to abolish student tuition fees, appears to have been costed – presumably this will come next week once Diane Abbott, the party’s Shadow Home Secretary, has finally worked out the bill for recruiting thousands of new police.

Though the leaking has opened up the policy debate on re-nationalisation – the manifesto appears to be designed to shore up support rather than broaden Labour’s mass appeal – the party is misguided if it thinks it can spend its way out of trouble.

As its plans were being scrutinised, the Bank of England was downgrading Britain’s economic growth while respected commentators, like Paul Johnson of the Institute of Fiscal Studies, were noting that planned increases in corporation tax will be counter-productive because reductions introduced by the Tories have actually led to businesses paying more to the Treasury.

Given this, Mr Corbyn now needs to prove that his sums do, in fact, add up. He has his work cut out.

A grim statistic

VOTERS are being thrown so many statistics during this General Election that they can’t be blamed for switching off – what has happened to old-fashioned stump speeches where soundbites were surplus to requirements because politicians spoke with passion and conviction?

However here is a truly shocking set of statistics that the country cannot ignore. More than 2,579 dangerous weapons, including samurai swords, axes and air guns, were confiscated at schools in 2015-16, a figure which could be even higher because only 32 out of 43 police forces in England and Wales provided data.

At least 47 culprits found with weapons were below 10-years-old, the age at which delinquents can face criminal prosecution. And this number, according to the data, included three five-year-olds, one of which was caught with a knife.

This region does not need reminding about the risks that these weapons pose to school safety – teacher Ann Maguire was knifed to death by pupil Will Cornick, 15, at Corpus Christi College, Leeds, in April 2014 while teacher Vincent Uzomah was seriously injured when stabbed by a racist pupil at a Bradford academy the following year.

Yet, while schools are clearly working closely  with the police to uphold safety, the most worrying fact of all is not only the number of young people who feel the need to arm themselves, but think it is acceptable to take such weapons to a school environment.

Until the reasons for this mindset are better understood, the number of teachers and pupils injured by such lethal weapons threatens to be one of the grimmest statistics of all. That cannot be right, can it?

The plane facts

TRAGICALLY killed on this day a century ago when his biplane fell from the sky and crash landed in Leeds, daredevil test pilot Rowland Ding, 31, was a pioneering aviator whose place in history deserves to be remembered.

A local celebrity because of his work at Blackburn’s aircraft factory at a time when flying was still in its infancy, today’s tribute is a poignant reminder of the human risks that characterised the early days of aviation. Without such sacrifices, and the lessons learned from each and every tragedy, the RAF would not have been in a position to win the Battle of Britain. And international air transport would not be the safe conveyance that it is today.