Stop dragging your heels Prime Minister — or Jeremy Corbyn WILL win the next General Election
IT is Theresa May’s birthday tomorrow. But Tory activists won’t be showering her with presents at their convention.
Rather, they’ll want to let her know what went so wrong at the election.
I understand that May won’t apologise directly for the campaign, and its failures.
But she will indicate that she’ll accept the recommendations of the review into it carried out by the former party chairman Eric Pickles and the chairman of the backbench 1922 Committee, Graham Brady.
But what Theresa May says to her party is, ultimately, less important than what she says to the country.
Jeremy Corbyn is riding high. Labour is buzzing with self-confidence while too many Tories still appear disorientated by the election result. “I fear people will notice this contrast,” admits one Cabinet Minister.
Corbyn painted the Tories as tired, out of ideas and clinging to power for power’s sake in his conference speech.
It is a potent narrative that plays to the folk memory of the 1990s and the failings of the Major government.
So, it is essential that May shows she has an agenda — and injects a sense of urgency into it. She needs to show that things are going to start changing NOW, and not just in a couple of years’ time.
I have seen the No10 message sheet sent to Cabinet Ministers. It sets out the key points the Tories want to make next week. It is fine, as far as it goes.
The Tories will compare their “balanced approach” To Labour’s. They will say that under Labour “the costs would just rack up and up” leading to “more debt, higher taxes, fewer jobs”.
But the Tories must offer a vision of their own too. They can’t let Corbyn own hope.
I’m told that there will be several announcements on housing at this conference, and more in the Budget.
But the time for tinkering has passed.
The Tories need to be reversing the fall in home ownership BEFORE the next election, otherwise it will be too late and Corbyn will be Prime Minister.
As one senior backbencher frets: “Where’s the urgency? I want to see the bulldozers moving in.”
Inside Downing Street there are still those who worry about what Tory voters in leafy England will think about a massive house building programme.
But this underestimates how Corbyn has changed the political dynamics. These voters are becoming increasingly fearful about what a far-left government would mean for them.
If they are told that the way to stop this is to build more houses, they’ll accept it. Before the last election, Sajid Javid — the Local Government Secretary — proposed all sorts of schemes to get house building going. But No10 either blocked them or watered them down.
They now need to be prepared to embrace truly radical thinking on housing.
If the state needs to build the homes itself to get it done quickly enough then the Tories shouldn’t have any ideological hang up about that.
Jeremy Corbyn genuinely believes he is going to be the next Prime Minister. You only had to look at Labour conference this week to see how convinced they are that they are on the verge of power.
If the Tories are to stop this and prevent the election of the most left-wing Prime Minister in generations, then they are going to have to show voters that they are fixing things — and fast.
Tories seeking divine inspiration
THERE is an uneasy truce in the Tory party when it comes to the leadership.
Tory MPs won’t move against Mrs May on the assumption that she’ll go in 2019 when the first part of the Brexit deal is done.
But those around May have been threatening this peace in the last fortnight.
Few Tory MPs were that bothered when May, on a trip to Japan a few weeks ago, suggested that she wanted to lead the party into the next election. Why? Because they didn’t take it that seriously.
But the last week or so has seen friends of May suggesting that with a Brexit transition May might need to stay until 2021. Compounding this, her closest Cabinet ally Damian Green told me, in an interview for The Spectator, that May will lead the party into the next election and even set out the electoral strategy she’ll follow.
As one senior Tory backbencher warns, this approach to the leadership issue is “more likely to just make it a talking point again”. Even senior Cabinet Ministers admit that they are baffled as to why those close to May are discussing it.
“The golden rule of politics is that when you start talking about the leadership, you never end up talking about anything else,” warns one Tory veteran.
No10 were furious about Philip Hammond’s refusal to back Theresa May’s taking the party into the next election this week. But stoking up this question isn’t in their interests. They’d be better off letting others impose discipline on the Cabinet.
As one influential backbencher says of the Government’s warring factions: “The thing I hear most often from colleagues and party members is, ‘why can’t they shut the f*** up’.”
Many Tories are pinning their hopes on a new leader taking them to victory at the next election. But some aren’t so sure that even that will be enough. “Even if the Archangel Gabriel led the party, I’m not quite sure they could turn it around,” says one former Cabinet Minister.
A party in a state of denial?
SOMETHING remarkable happened this week. The shadow Chancellor admitted Labour’s policies could lead to a run on the Pound – and it didn’t seem to make any difference.
When I asked one seasoned Tory campaigner why their party couldn’t capitalise on this stark admission, I was told that the Corbynites are “very effective at acting as if it doesn’t matter and we’ve got a lame-duck leader”.
Corbyn’s proximity to power poses profound questions for the genuine moderates in the Labour ranks. Are they, like US Republicans, prepared to acquiesce in the election of someone who they know to be unfit for office?
Or have they got more spine than that?
MP's comment is jest pathetic
AT Momentum’s closing party on Tuesday night, Labour MP Clive Lewis declared, from the stage: “On your knees, bitch.”
Lewis’s defence for the ill-judged remark was that it was directed at a man and said in jest.
But not everyone in the room took it that way.
It is another reminder that there are few things more pathetic than a politician trying to get down with the kids.
— THE Government has been scrambling this week to protect 4,000 jobs at Bombardier’s Belfast plant after the US announced plans to slap huge tariffs on the company following a complaint from Boeing.
The issue is particularly politically sensitive for Theresa May because of her reliance on the support of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party.
But inside Government, senior figures think that Boeing’s real aim is to buy Bombardier, and that they’ll soon present this as the way to resolve this crisis without any job losses.
MOST READ IN OPINION
- James Forsyth is the political editor of The Spectator