UK's Johnson wants to talk about Brexit, not health care

With two days until polling day, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson sought on Tuesday to get his election campaign back onto Brexit after coming under fire for his lack of empathy for looking away from an image of a child sleeping on a hospital floor while seeking treatment.

The story of 4-year-old Jack Williment-Barr has overshadowed campaigning for Thursday's general election as Johnson and his Conservatives hunt for crucial last-minute votes.

The opposition Labour Party has painted Jack's plight - a sick child forced to lie for hours on a floor because no hospital bed was free - as a symptom of Britain's ailing health system, which has suffered under years of Conservative government austerity measures.

As Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party kept up its relentless focus on problems with the National Health Service, Johnson's Conservative Party tried to focus voters' minds on the prospect of an uncertain result and divided Parliament, which would endanger Johnson's plan to lead Britain out of the European Union on January 31.

All 650 seats in the House of Commons seats are up for grabs in this election, which is being held more than two years early in a bid to break Britain's political impasse over Brexit.

Opinion polls give the Conservatives a lead over Labour, but all parties are nervous about the verdict of a volatile electorate that is weary after years of wrangling over Brexit.

Johnson's clumsy reaction to Jack's plight was a late misstep in a largely gaffe-free campaign. A video of the prime minister briefly declining to look at a cellphone photo of Jack on a journalist's phone - and then placing the phone in his pocket - has been viewed more than a million times.

In the clip of the interview, ITV reporter Joe Pike said to Johnson: "You refuse to look at the photo. You've taken my phone and put it in your pocket, prime minister."
The Labour Party found itself embarrassed, meanwhile, by the leak of a phone recording to the right-wing political website Guido Fawkes in which the party's health spokesman suggested that the party would lose Thursday's vote because voters "can't stand Corbyn."
Jonathan Ashworth said his unguarded remarks were merely banter with a Conservative friend and claimed he had been truing to psych him out like football managers do."