Jeremy Corbyn will tonight urge millions of voters to back Labour and “prove wrong” critics who say his radical agenda for Britain is not deliverable.
In a rally in Hoxton, east London, the Labour leader was set to issue a last-minute appeal to the nation to “vote for hope and real change”.
He was due to add: “Tomorrow you can choose to rescue our NHS, you can choose to fund our schools, you can choose to end homelessness and child poverty.”
With official figures today showing a peak in deaths during the summer heatwave, he was set to say: “You can choose a government that will tackle the climate emergency, and rewrite the rules of our economy so that it works for the many, not the few.”
However, leading economists have dismissed Labour’s manifesto as not “properly credible”.
They criticised Mr Corbyn’s blueprint, which includes hundreds of billions more for better public services, infrastructure and greening the economy, and nationalising rail and energy companies, for being heavily dependent on a huge borrowing splurge.
They also say it will mean higher taxes, particularly on people earning more than £80,000 a year and on business.
But Mr Corbyn, who has carried out 92 campaign stops or other election events, argued his plans for an array of giveaways, including boosting public sector pay and the national minimum wage, were affordable without plunging the country into a financial crisis.
“The most powerful and wealthy people in Britain have spent this election campaign telling you that if you want those things, you’re asking too much,” he was due to say.
“You can prove them wrong tomorrow. It’s time for real change.”
But his campaign suffered a setback yesterday when shadow health secretary Jonathan Ashworth was secretly recorded by a Conservative friend warning that Labour’s situation in the election was “dire”.
He also said that if Mr Corbyn got into No 10 the civil service would “pretty quickly move to safeguard security”. Mr Ashworth sought to brush off the leak, insisting it was “banter”.
In a sign that Labour may have underestimated the threat to its seats in the Midlands and the North, the party was urging supporters in London to head to the regions tomorrow to boost the campaign to get out its vote.
It had previously encouraged supporters to do phone banks from the West Midlands, targeting seats in the capital.
Activists are now being mobilised to travel to a string of constituencies including Coventry South, Stoke-on-Trent Central, Stoke-on-Trent North, Derby North, Birmingham Northfield, Lincoln, West Bromwich West, Wolverhampton North East and Wolverhampton South West.
Closer to home, they were being sent to Watford, Milton Keynes South, Milton Keynes North, Bedford, Peterborough, Ipswich and Canterbury West. A giant survey by pollsters YouGov suggested few Labour seats are under threat in London.
Speaking to activists in Glasgow this morning, Mr Corbyn accused Boris Johnson of not telling the truth on talks with the US about a future trade deal — which he says will allow American firms access to the UK healthcare market — and the Brexit negotiations.
He said: “Can you honestly trust a Prime Minister who cannot tell the truth about the talks with the Americans over the privatisation of our National Health Service?” The Tories have denied that the NHS is on the table in post-Brexit trade talks, while
President Donald Trump has insisted “if you handed [the NHS] to us on a silver platter, we wouldn’t want it.”
