COMMENT

KEIR Starmer is almost finished. His party is in all-out civil war, and his ministers are now more interested in who will replace the Prime Minister than the job of governing the country.

Everywhere you look, the government has taken its eye off the ball.

We were promised a Defence Investment Plan last autumn. We’re still waiting.

In the meantime, orders for new military equipment like drones and tanks have been put on hold. The upgrade of Navy frigates has been paused.

Last week, the British aerospace company developing a replacement for the famous Red Arrows aerobatic jet went into administration, because government funding for the project was too slow to materialise.

The civil war in the Labour Party is weakening our national security. But it doesn’t stop there.

Yesterday, we learned that unemployment has risen again under this government.

Unemployment has gone up almost every month since Starmer entered

No 10, but the most recent statistics make for particularly grim reading.

Job vacancies in Britain have dropped to their lowest level in five years, with retail and hospitality particularly badly hit by Rachel Reeves’s tax rises.

There are now 210,000 fewer people in work than at the start of this year.

April saw the largest single monthly drop in employment outside of the Covid pandemic.

The Prime Minister is now so obsessed with keeping his job, and the Labour Party so obsessed with who will take his job, that they don’t seem to care about the people in this country losing their jobs.

Today, we also learned that the energy price cap is predicted to rise by over £200 in July. I still remember Keir Starmer promising to cut our energy bills by £300. Another failed promise.

Energy bills were already £70 more expensive under Labour than under the Conservatives. Now they are set to rise again.

While Labour makes life harder for working people, the Conservatives are working on serious plans to bring down bills. Our Cheap Power Plan would cut household bills by an average of £200, remove VAT on bills and cut business electricity costs by 20%.

We would axe the carbon tax to save industry, and we will get Britain drilling our own oil and gas in the North Sea.

Keir Starmer could do all of this immediately and save everyone money.

But he’s now in a battle with Energy Secretary Ed Miliband for his survival in 10 Downing Street, so he doesn’t dare take this sort of bold decision.

Grime

Britain’s economic growth is weak. Business confidence is fragile. People are losing their jobs. Yet Labour ministers have spent the past two weeks fighting among themselves. While Labour turn inwards, I am developing serious plans to fix the problems that Starmer and his MPs are creating.

A plan to leave the ECHR and finally tackle illegal immigration. A plan to take back our streets and sort the crime and grime that plague our neighbourhoods.

A plan to scrap stamp duty and unglue the housing market. A plan to revitalise our high streets by backing the small businesses that make our country what it is.

A plan to properly fund our armed forces. A plan to sort the ever-increasing welfare bill and get Britain working again.

While Labour fight each other, only the Conservatives have a plan for a stronger economy and a stronger country.