The UK election campaign has its first major viral star…
An interview by Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott has been dominating news coverage in Britain, described by critics as a 'car crash'.
The opposition Labour Party has been forced to defend her performance and clarify figures she used while attempting to set out a new policy in policing.
As Olly Barratt reports from London.
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Diane Abbott went on LBC radio to tout a major policy announcement by Labour…
The party says it will put 10 000 extra police officers on the streets if it wins June's general election.
So Diane Abbott should probably have expected to be asked how much this would cost.
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We got there in the end - 80 million pounds it is.
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Hold on… wasn't it 10 000?
Let's come back to that though…
That 80 million pound figure….
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Oh… 250 000 police officers now…?
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over four years that does get close… to that 10 000 number we initially assembled here to talk about.
so what will it cost…?
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now i'm no mathematician but that adds up, i'm sure… to more than 80 million pounds…
so with this interview going viral it was left to diane abbott's party leader jeremy corbyn to clarify what labour believes the new flagship policing policy will cost.
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jeremy corbyn was further pressed on whether he was embarrassed by diane abbott's radio performance.
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and on a serious note the problem for the labour party is they wanted this conversation to lead to a discussion of what they claim are policing cuts by a conservative government when recent statistics suggest crime is once again on the rise in the UK.
what it has allowed instead is for the conservatives to continue to attack jeremy corbyn's pledges as unfunded, and his party leadership as chaotic - already an overarching theme of their campaign.
The UK goes to the polls on June 8th. And I promise you that number is correct.
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