Message the Tories must shout from the rooftops

AFTER the pollsters got it so wrong in 2015, and again in last year’s EU referendum, we have learned by now to take their predictions with a gargantuan pinch of salt. But no matter how dubious the figures, it is undeniable that the gap between the Tories and Labour has narrowed since the campaign began — with one rogue poll this week even suggesting the Government could lose its overall majority.

It sounds profoundly unlikely, but what can be said with certainty is that the Tories are suffering a wobble, for which they themselves must take much of the blame.

Over the past six weeks, they have failed abysmally to get across their truly remarkable achievements since taking over a near-bankrupt Britain from Gordon Brown in 2010.

Who would have guessed then, when Labour was warning that ‘Tory cuts’ would cause a triple-dip recession and throw millions on the dole, that seven years on we would be among the fastest growing economies in the developed world, with more than two million jobs created and the highest employment rate in our history — and an unemployment rate half the European average?

Only yesterday, in a stunning tribute to Iain Duncan Smith’s welfare reforms, official figures showed the number of households in which nobody works has fallen by another 80,000 in the past year, lifting yet more families from lives of idleness and dependence on the state and giving hope where there was none. Like youth unemployment — which has devastated a generation in southern Europe — workless households in Britain are now at a record low.

Meanwhile, as the Left- leaning National Institute of Economic and Social Research confirmed this week, steady growth has enabled NHS spending to rise to a record high, while patients’ dissatisfaction with the service, despite all its troubles, is at its lowest ever.

Indeed, the list of economic successes goes on and on: consumer confidence at an all-time high; investment flooding into Britain; the FTSE 100 at peak levels; inflation and interest rates at historic lows; and real wages rising over recent months.

Why have the Conservatives not trumpeted these achievements from the rooftops? More baffling still, why have they failed to bring home to voters Jeremy Corbyn’s utter unfitness to hold high office?

Wedded for a lifetime to Marxist ideas that have spread poverty and misery wherever they’ve been tried, here is a politician who would wipe out all the economic progress of decades at a stroke.

His cripplingly expensive, unfunded programme of mass nationalisation would drag Britain back to the darkest days of the Seventies, just when the rest of the world — with the almost single exception of North Korea — is turning its back on state socialism.

As for his swingeing taxes on businesses, income, wealth and land, these would lead to a flight of investment from this country unseen since the war, decimating jobs, depressing wages and crushing living standards.

Can voters really be so naïve as to believe his fantasy pledges of thumping great pay rises all round, earlier retirement, free childcare, free tuition — free this, that and the other, all courtesy of the mighty (incompetent) state, with countless billions to spare for investment in public services? Every day his list of lavish promises lengthens, as he spews out money that doesn’t exist.

Yesterday, he added a pledge to cap rail fares, and another to write off billions of pounds in existing student loans. Can voters seriously believe such la-la-land economics? Have they so quickly forgotten that Britain is almost £2 trillion in debt?

To top it all, la-la Jeremy also vowed yesterday to tear up restrictions on excess trade union power.

All of which prompts the question: why have business leaders, who were so vocally determined to terrify Britain over Brexit, been so quiet during this campaign? Every one of them could testify that the Labour leader’s extreme brand of socialism would be the kiss of death to jobs and growth.

It’s a huge mystery, too, why the Tories have made so little of Mr Corbyn’s other views — many of which are an affront to decent, patriotic voters who have traditionally supported Labour.

Take mass immigration — a cause of deep concern to people of every political persuasion, who worry about the pressure it exerts on school places, hospital beds, jobs, wages, housing and infrastructure, not to mention our social cohesion and national identity.

Indeed, concerns about migration were among the prime reasons why so many Labour supporters voted for Brexit. Yet Mr Corbyn takes the opposite view, believing the more we allow in, the merrier.

Only yesterday, he was forced to confirm the Mail’s revelation that he’s discussing plans to relax rules on asylum, make it easier for migrants’ families to settle in Britain and throw open our borders to low and unskilled workers, not just from the EU, but from the rest of the world, too.

With his views on migration, his shambling failure to grasp detail — and his stated determination to stay in the single market and other Brussels institutions whatever the price — the very thought of putting such a man in charge of Brexit negotiations is enough to chill the blood.

As for his past sickening demonstrations of support for terrorists, from the IRA to Hamas and Hezbollah, it is blatantly dishonest of him to claim his only motive has been to secure peace.

As the Mail documented on Saturday, the truth is that he has befriended some of the world’s most evil terrorists who share one common factor: they hate Britain and our way of life.

Like the odious Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell (who lists plotting to overthrow capitalism among his recreations in Who’s Who), he appears to believe bombs and bullets are legitimate means of achieving aims hostile to the West.

As for national security, this lifelong supporter of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament — who, God help us, has made clear he would never press the nuclear button — is the last man on Earth to back our Armed Forces and maintain our defences in this dangerous world.

There is no escaping the truth, however, that some of the Tories’ wounds have been entirely self-inflicted. For example, Theresa May should surely have thought twice before saying she would means-test the winter fuel allowance — a thoroughly un-Tory measure which might well cost more to administer than it would save.

But her biggest mistake, clearly, was her plan to recover the costs of social care from the estates of recipients who leave more than £100,000 on their deaths — while the swift U-turn that followed the announcement dented her reputation for sure-footedness.

Thus, she gave Mr Corbyn a chance to make spurious capital out of the issue, allowing him to pose preposterously as the champion of social care recipients who want to pass on their homes to their families.

In fact, Labour plans not only to impose a wealth tax but to slash the threshold for inheritance tax, thereby instantly slapping 40 per cent on all estates worth more than £650,000 (if we can believe that figure, which we can’t), meaning countless family homes will have to be sold.

The Tories must start ramming that point home. To be fair to Mrs May, she has been a victim of her own honesty. She is at least trying to find solutions to a huge challenge — how to look after the elderly in comfort and dignity, with lifespans lengthening in an increasingly ageing population.

The Mail has a suggestion. With just seven days to go, why doesn’t the Prime Minister admit humbly that her manifesto pledge was a well-intentioned mistake, based on a sincere belief that a responsible government needs to be candid with an electorate about the greatest social problem of our age? She could explain that the rancorous, tribal nature of British politics prevents politicians of any party conducting discussions on such an emotive issue.

She could go on to promise to set up a Royal Commission, above the political fray, to examine the whole question of how to keep the NHS and social care — two areas inextricably linked — on a viable footing.

Thus, she could lance the boil that has scarred her campaign. This would leave her free to focus on her party’s stunning economic successes, her determination to get the best deal for Britain over Brexit, her pledge to bring immigration down — and the certainty that Mr Corbyn, the terrorist-loving, economically illiterate Marxist leader of la-la land, would wreck Britain.

On any rational reading of the two contestants for No 10 — their policies, instincts and personal qualities — she deserves a comfortable victory a week today, to give her a strong mandate in the Brexit talks ahead and build on everything her party has achieved.