Britain's Johnson launches election campaign on opposition turf

BIRMINGHAM: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Wednesday launched the Conservatives' election campaign in a traditional stronghold of the Labour opposition he hopes to win over by vowing to"get Brexit done".

Johnson had visited Queen Elizabeth II in Buckingham Palace earlier Wednesday to ask the 93-year-old monarch to dissolve parliament and get the Dec 12 contest underway.He has called for the splintered country's third general election in four years in a bid to resolve the crisis that has unfolded since voters opted in 2016 to break away from the European Union after nearly 50 years.

He is hoping traditional Labour voters will be sceptical of their leader Jeremy Corbyn's plan to hold another referendum on Brexit after renegotiating new divorce terms with Brussels. That followed a foot-in-mouth moment from his ally Jacob Rees-Mogg, who had to"profoundly apologise" on Tuesday for suggesting that some of the 72 victims of London's 2017 Grenfell Tower inferno could have survived if they followed their"common sense" and fled for safety.Meanwhile, long-simmering divisions in the Labour Party between centrists and supporters of Corbyn were on display when deputy leader Tom Watson announced that he would not be standing in the election.

"They pretend that their hatred is directed only at certain billionaires - and they point their fingers at individuals with a relish and a vindictiveness not seen since Stalin persecuted the kulaks," he wrote.

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