Theresa May has the chance to make us proud in her Conservative manifesto as she prepares for landslide General Election victory against Labour
Tim Montgomerie is editor of new campaigning website UnHerd.com
THERESA MAY is set to be remembered as one of Britain’s most significant Prime Ministers.
For a start, she’s likely to win one of the largest ever parliamentary majorities.
The only doubt surrounds whether her landslide is big enough to bury the most selfish man in politics — the leader of the Labour Party.
If Jeremy Corbyn cared with his head, as well as his heart, for the working class he would have resigned months ago — making way for a Labour MP who had a realistic chance of winning power on June 8.
A second reason why Mrs May’s time at the top will be studied by future generations is that “Brexit means Brexit” is not just a catchphrase for this clergyman’s daughter who was taught about public service throughout her childhood.
Our country’s second female PM knows she would shred her reputation if she EU-turned.
Worse, millions of people who don’t normally vote but took part in last year’s referendum would probably give up on politics and democracy.
But there’s a third thing Theresa May must do in order to really deserve a special place in our island nation’s story.
She needs to begin to deliver the fairer Britain that motivated so many of Leave’s 17,410,742 supporters.
That number was greater than voted for any political party, prime minister or referendum in our electoral history.
They flowed to the polling booths from the council estates where turnout is normally dismally low, from Sunderland, Stoke, the Welsh Valleys and the other communities neglected by pro-EU Labour MPs.
When Mrs May first became PM she appeared to understand the 52 per cent wanted a Great Reset as well as the Great Exit.
She promised to govern for Britons struggling to make ends meet, for victims of prejudice and for those who felt they were never listened to.
Unfortunately, her policies have so far been 99 per cent Cameron and one per cent May.
Tax cuts continue to go to the better off.
Excessive protection of too much green belt has undermined housebuilding and condemned young families to expensive, cramped and rented accommodation that is a long commute from their workplaces.
Better-off pensioners have seen their benefits increased significantly while lower-waged workers are losing the top-ups that help them to make ends meet.
The South and cities still receive the lion’s share of infrastructure budgets at the expense of the North, medium-sized towns and the countryside.
Until now, Mrs May has been able to hide behind the promises made in the 2015 Tory manifesto and the limitations they placed upon her.
That excuse evaporates next week, when her manifesto is published and becomes the guidebook for the next parliament.
Will she use it to look the nation in the eye and admit to higher earners they will be at the back of the queue for tax cuts because nurses using foodbanks and workers losing their jobs to robots are her priority?
Will she deliver a fireside chat to retired people and admit the basic pension will now rise more slowly so she can afford to build affordable homes for their grandchildren?
This is still Toryism. It’s still tax cuts. It’s still home ownership.
But it’s a one-nation Conservatism that prioritises tax relief for the poor and gets more investment in roads, railways and other hi-tech routes to prosperity to Cornwall and the North East, as well as to London and the Home Counties.
All of this isn’t just the right thing to do, it might also deliver a victory at the 2022 election as well.
Do it Theresa. Your country would be so proud of you — and, I imagine, your father would be too.
MRS MAY'S GIRL POWER
LEGIONS of politically correct twitterers almost spat out their home-made vegan stroganoff after Philip May told BBC TV’s One Show that he did the “traditional boy jobs” in the prime ministerial household – such as taking out the bins.
If Mrs May had been more speedy and sassy than strong and stable she could have even won the hearts of feminists.
“I do the girl jobs,” she could have said, “like running the country”!
MOST READ IN OPINION
DAVIS UP ON GREEK TRAGEDY
THE Brexit Secretary, David Davis, is one of Westminster’s most interesting people – partly because he studies the ideas of those on the other side of the political divide.
He was a friend of that anti-EU socialist Tony Benn and is now reading the best-selling book written by the leather jacket-wearing former finance minister of Greece – the anti-capitalist Yanis Varoufakis.
Mr Varoufakis documents how the EU repeatedly refused to loosen the debt straitjacket imposed on his country by the unemployment-generating eurozone.
The book is a story of Brussels bureaucrats using lies, exhausting timescales and last-minute alterations of procedure to get their way.
While Mr Davis may be leaning on a Greek socialist’s book, one of the PM’s most senior aides appears to be leaning on Vogue magazine.
The aide told a former Tory minister, anxious about the Brexit negotiations, he had forgotten Britain’s secret weapon in the Brexit talks – Mrs May’s glamour.
Really? Mrs May does dress well but if this key No10 adviser really believes in the diplomatic power of kitten heels we may be seeing the first signs of her amazing poll ratings leading to arrogance.
RED'S BLACK DAY
THIS week’s leaked Labour manifesto was as wordy as the version unveiled by Michael Foot in 1983, described at the time as the “longest suicide note in history”.
The residents of Hammersmith and Fulham, in West London, won’t be surprised at this funereal quality to Her Majesty’s Opposition.
The red rosette-wearing candidate in the constituency of Hammersmith goes by the name of Mr Slaughter, and in neighbouring Fulham by Mr De’Ath.
Perhaps black should be Labour’s new colour?
Or how about white, to match the flag of surrender?
Mr Corbyn has promised us all a minister for disarmament. Abolishing nuclear weapons sounds a lovely idea but it’s dangerously foolish.
If global democracies gave up their arsenals the technology would still exist.
The world’s most evil regimes would terrorise the rest of us by secretly acquiring nukes.
In the 70 years since we dreaded ever living under a nuclear mushroom cloud the number of deaths from war has been fewer than ten million.
In the 40 years before these hellish weapons were invented the death toll in major wars equalled about 100million.
The ten-fold difference is not a coincidence. The fear of these awful weapons prevents the great powers fighting each other.
Where once we were an upstairs, downstairs nation divided by class or a country of reds vs blues, we could be becoming a nation divided by how we voted on EU membership.
A YouGov survey seen by The Sun finds that twice as many of us believe we have more in common with people who voted the same way on Brexit as with people who support the same party.