Tories can’t dodge blame for slow lane
IT’S the economy, stupid.
Keir Starmer has been learning the US campaign slogan that Bill Clinton used to win power.
Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt are learning it too as the PM and Chancellor realise voters will punish politicians who impoverish them.
Labour are yet to come up with a deal-clinching offer and have work ahead to show voters how they can improve their lives.
But the Conservatives are demonstrating how governments more often lose elections than oppositions win them.
Come Autumn of next year, the period that Tory new chair Greg Hands effectively confirmed the next General Election will be held, people will be able to take revenge on his party.
The worst fall in living standards on record in Britain is not only down to Covid and Putin.
Most of the world has also suffered those calamities.
What the Tories won’t be able to explain is why we are hurting more after their 13 years of increasingly limp excuses. Our constipated economy – having avoided recession by a technicality and flatlined for the past three months – is no cause for celebration. It is an international embarrassment which has left Britain the sick nation of the world. The Conservatives will carry the can when the UK economy is still -0.8% smaller than before the pandemic, an unparalleled failure when every other G7 industrial country is larger.
Another nail in the party’s coffin is the fact household energy bills that were typically £1,200 at the start of last year have soared to £3,000 this Spring.
They were never a party of economic competence, although they once could pretend to be.
The ailing NHS and sleaze will be major election issues.
But when it comes down to pounds and pence they’ll pay the price for making voters poorer.
To clinch a decisive victory, Labour must stop playing safe.
The party must offer real change rather than focusing on reassurance. However we cut it, though, all the polls are pointing to the Conservatives losing credibility and votes for treating people as stupid on the economy.