One of the things I heard a lot about the process of government from inside Government was ‘you have to deal with the world as it is, not how you wish it was’. Starmer prefers a world of wishes and worse, he expects you to go along with it.
It’ll feel a shorter road to May than the calendar suggests, all parties need to get on top of their equations and produce some credible solutions to our knotty problems.
The smart thing for the Conservatives to do is stick to painting the picture of the future, oppose the Government and let Reform do whatever they want. Badenoch doesn’t need to include Farage in her Conservative vision for the years ahead
Reeves, got hammered in the Commons, but now it is the Conservatives’ job to go after, relentlessly, every single way the Government is failing, the economic risks it is exposing us all to, and most crucially how you stop it, and genuinely boost growth with a Tory plan.
As she stands in Downing Street for that photo op Reeves should not underestimate how much the contents of her red box could finish off the economy, the government and her if it underwhelms.
53.9 per cent of members think it likely or highly likely Farage will be PM, 69.4 per cent think there’ll be some form of post election deal between Reform and the Conservatives, and 66.3 per cent expect more senior Tories to defect in future.
There is a triple lock elephant in the room of the excellent, honest and increasingly well made argument that says we must live within our means, cut public spending, and reduce borrowing, as the unpleasant medicine that will make us all better (off) eventually.
It’s not a series of resets but an unending catalogue of missteps, false starts, and kite flying that ends up crashing to the ground. It’s more newsworthy now when Starmer has a good week than a bad one. Send in the clowns? Don’t bother, they’re here.
It’s time Labour faced up to the results of their non-plan plan. A bad slogan and winging it in Government has not worked for them and the problem of illegal migration we are all trying to tackle has got measurably much worse.
The idea that if ‘both sides are accusing you of bias you must be doing something right’ has built an internal complacency that accusations of bias, say more about the accuser than the BBC, and that any critics just want the Beeb dismantled. It’s made them blind.
Farage has admitted Reform needs experience. The right thought-through blueprint for the future comes from sometimes hard and bitter Government experience, but is ultimately better for it. Despite how people see them the Tories need to push that point – it matters.
Labour, and actually Reform, are a ‘target rich environment’. Start firing a relentless barrage. You don’t have to promote or reference them to hurt them. They’d give you no quarter, at all. They haven’t. According to their spin teams we are already dead.
An insistence in the face of tragic events on using ‘deeply concerned’ usually suggests to me, that deep down, and to just be seen to say something, the person adopting it, is anything but.
The political ‘series’, like the TV version is not over yet, it has – bar the utter implosion of Labour – a few more fraught years to run. The ‘obvious’ winners now, need to stay the obvious winners for another three years, and ‘a week is a long time in politics’.
Powell has, intended or otherwise, the potential to force the Prime Minister to regularly reach for the paracetamol. The Tories will watch any attempt she makes to push Starmer further left. Reform will thank her for matching Starmer in talking about them all the time.