It’s time for the Tories to show some urgency and start fixing Britain’s problems

NEXT week the Tories desperately need to show some urgency about fixing Britain’s problems.

The Government appears at a standstill, lacking energy or imagination.

This paralysis is not just down to their election trauma and fragile majority. It has been going on since before the Brexit referendum and throughout Theresa May’s leadership.

We know they are hamstrung by a lack of money. We know Brexit seems all-consuming.

But their plans for helping the low-paid, the “just about managings” and a young generation seemingly being seduced by socialism are timid, where they exist at all, and their timetable for implementing them is woefully slow.

The Tories’ new social media “attack” slogan  “Labour always take it too far”  betrays an absence of ambition and nous.

They cannot gain simply by not being Jeremy Corbyn, especially not with a line that feeble. Corbyn won’t just “take it too far” . . . his Marxist mob would pose an existential threat to the economy, millions of jobs and the stability of our country. His socialist utopia, Venezuela, is now a smoking ruin.

Worse still, though, is that the Tories seem oblivious to the national mood.

Britain is crying out for change, as we were in 1997 and 2010. Not yet a change of Government, though, as June’s election proved. Corbyn is not the shoo-in his insufferably smug conference made out. He is simply stepping into the ­vacuum the Government is leaving him.

Voters DO want to hear that measures are coming right now to improve their lives and put more money in their pockets. Not in five years, or ten, or whenever Downing Street and the monolithic civil service get round to it.

The Tory conference, and November’s Budget, must be packed with genuinely radical ideas to be rolled out rapidly. Minor tweaks won’t suffice.

We said yesterday the Tories must win the case for capitalism over the perils of socialism. More immediately they must  make rapid progress on living standards and stop making excuses for inaction.

The Government must effect the change Britain wants. What else is power for?

If it can’t, voters may gamble on someone who will, no matter how monstrous the risk.

Bang on, Boris

BREXIT voters should thank their lucky stars Boris Johnson is batting for them in a Remain-heavy Cabinet.

We cannot fault the red lines the Foreign Secretary sets out today.

The transition period must not creep beyond two years. During it, we must accept no new EU or ECJ rulings, nor sign up to any others that would bind our trade negotiators’ hands later.

And we must not pay a fee for single market access once we’re finally out.

Anything short of full control over our borders, laws and money will betray 17.4million Leavers.

The PM must listen to him.