There is madness in the air — democracy is hanging by a thread

There’s an end of Days madness in the air. We’ve had a spate of terrorist attacks and a conflagration of biblical proportions which claimed dozens of innocent lives. What the hell’s going to happen next? While all this was unfolding on a hollywood disaster movie scale, the self-serving political class has been convulsed by the fallout from a seismic General election result which has left the nation rudderless.

That old adage about attempting to navigate a certain creek while suffering from a 100 per cent deficiency in the paddle department was never more appropriate.

The Conservative Party has reverted to unsavoury type; the Prime Minister did her trademark hiding-behind-the-sofa trick when the country was crying out for leadership; and Labour has tried shamefully to exploit tragedy to incite revolution on the streets.

Frankly, it’s been difficult to keep up over the past few days. At one stage, I turned on the TV to see Gerry Adams giving a press conference outside 10 Downing street.

Don’t tell me Adams is our new PM. Who voted for that? still, given the prevailing level of hysteria and insanity, nothing would have surprised me. I wouldn’t put it past Corbyn to enter into a formal power-sharing arrangement with sinn Fein, just to get the ‘Tory scum’ out of power.

And if that happened, no doubt it would be greeted ecstatically by spoilt, vacuous millennials — whose collective memory dates back no further than their last post on snapchat, whatever that is — and who have brainwashed themselves into thinking this superannuated Trot is the new Messiah.

It’s not just the young, either, who have bought into the fiction that Corbyn is a fit and proper person to be allowed near the levers of power. The latest opinion poll across all voters gives Labour a 3 per cent lead, were another election to be held soon. heaven help us.

Yet instead of deciding to bind and heel, to steady the Buffs, the Tories appear to have suffered a serious nervous breakdown. According to one report, May has been given ten days by the Men In suits to get her act together, or walk the plank. Contrary to accepted wisdom,

disloyalty is the Tories’ real secret weapon. rivals are not so much jockeying for position, they’re under starter’s orders. They should be careful what they wish for. But if they’re going to shoot her, they should get it over with sharpish.

To her credit, Mother Theresa is still clinging to the wreckage, against her better judgment, in the hope that the ship of state can be corrected. Unlike, of course, Call Me Dave, who did a Captain Oates the moment the referendum went against him.

Yesterday, still smarting from the concerted kicking she got over her underwhelming response to the Grenfell Tower fire — deemed insufficiently lachrymose and touchy-feely by the commissars of emotional correctness — Theresa pulled on her best Widow’s Weeds and paid a visit to Finsbury Park, scene of the latest senseless attack on London’s streets.

Whether that will be enough to save her is debatable. As far as her critics are concerned, she could have turned up in the full burka and it still would have been ‘disrespectful’.

Unaccustomed as this column is to sticking up for Mrs May, I’d far rather have a Prime Minister who responds to tragedy in a dignified and measured fashion than one who switches on the trembling lip, starts hugging all and sundry and cynically dragoons the dead for party-political point-scoring.

You can’t imagine Churchill kissing east end crones during the Blitz, just so he could parade his feminine side for the Pathe newsreels. Mother Theresa may have all the charisma and emotional intelligence of Albert rn, but at least she doesn’t flick automatically into the full Tony Blair ‘People’s Princess’ mode as her default response to adversity.

Twenty years ago, in this column, in this newspaper, in the wake of Lady Di’s death, I confessed to feeling like a stranger in my own land. Who were all these grown men and women crying a river over someone they didn’t know, and monstering anyone who failed to display the prescribed dollop of vicarious grief?

People are understandably distressed today about the heartbreaking loss of life at Grenfell Tower. I’m one of them. But that’s no excuse for those who are desperate to show they ‘ care’ more deeply than others.

If I hear another well-heeled notting hillbilly proclaiming their new-found empathy with their less fortunate neighbours on the nearby sink estate — about whom they’d never given a second thought until last Wednesday — I shall reach for the sick bag. In this depressing age of rock- around- the- clock media, with everyone starring in their own movie, never underestimate the ability of self- promoting ‘celebs’ to make the suffering of others all about them.

We have come to expect this nauseating exhibitionism from dopey birds like Lily Allen. But we are entitled to expect the leader of her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition to behave with a little more decorum.

Yet, despicably, Corbyn — a hard-hearted terrorist cheerleader who has always been happy to overlook the thousands of innocents killed by his heroes in hezbollah, hamas and the IrA — had the audacity to claim at the weekend that he ‘cared’ more about the tragic residents of Grenfell Tower than Theresa May, a devout, churchgoing Christian and vicar’s daughter.

In case you’re wondering, I decided deliberately to exempt myself from the knee- jerk witch-huntery which followed the awful tower block fire. The facts spoke for themselves. There was no grandstanding or second-guessing necessary. nor did I succumb to the temptation to dignify with a response those opportunist Left-wing ghouls who blamed the tragedy on the ‘Tory cuts’. They are without shame. how else could Marxist stooge John McDonnell, Corbyn’s puppetmaster and shadow Chancellor, call for a million people to take to the streets in a ‘Day of rage’ aimed at bringing down a democratically elected government?

Corbyn himself is advocating that private property should be seized to house the displaced of Grenfell Tower, even though it’s against his beloved human rights laws. The mask didn’t take long to slip, did it? You can’t say you weren’t warned.

While we all sympathise with the plight of those poor folk made homeless by the fire, seventies- style socialist direct action isn’t the answer. And this from a man who aspires to the highest office in the land.

We’re not out of the woods yet. The shopping with violence season will soon be upon us. summer’s here and the time is right for fighting in the streets. The ‘ no justice, no peace’ headbangers are gearing up for a ruck.

By all accounts, they plan to storm Parliament during the Queen’s speech tomorrow. Let’s hope the Old Bill are ready for them and prepared to crack a few skulls.

so this is no time for the Tories to start playing silly buggers again. And stop squabbling about Brexit, too. respect the referendum result. Democracy is hanging by a gossamer thread and, far from rallying to its defence, the official Opposition is blatantly fomenting civil unrest.

Labour’s cynical exploitation of human tragedy, and its leaders’ refusal to accept the legitimate result of the election proves yet again it is utterly unsuited for office.

Whatever happens next, we need, if you’ll pardon the expression, a ‘ strong and stable’ Government — initially to get us through the next few months and then through Brexit and beyond.

For better or worse, that means a grown-up, united Conservative Party. As I wrote before the election, the alternative is simply too horrible to contemplate.

It still is.