However you slice it, the Tories are toast
ROMAN Emperors ruled with bread and circuses, and we’ve just seen the biggest circus of all.
Yet here, in modern-day Britain, the cost of living crisis will continue to bite long after memories of the £250million Coronation fade.
With most people likely to feel worse off at the next General Election than they did at the last, Keir Starmer can smell the sweet scent of victory.
The expensive Coronation interrupted Labour celebrations after the local elections.
But the respite will be painfully brief for the Conservatives, because the dire state of the economy isn’t the only ace in Labour’s hand.
There is also, of course, the ailing NHS, not to mention crime and criminal justice – a Tory trump card until they threw it away by collapsing the system. Poker-faced
Starmer has switched insults to focus voters on what they don’t like about Prime Minister Rishi Sunak.
Yes, he’s still weak, knocked around by smug, nimby Tories who hate building houses or lack compassion for refugees fleeing terror.
But branding this Prime Minister out of touch chimed more readily on doorsteps during council elections. The results, as we’ve seen, were very good for Labour and really terrible for the Conservatives. The wealthiest No10 tenant in modern history, with his own private GP on call and the security of more money than he could spend in 1,000 lifetimes, is an unmissable target amid the cost of living, health and crime crises.
That Starmer is still to seal the deal to guarantee a Labour majority Government remains an electoral fact, despite Labour scoring its best local triumph since Tony Blair’s heyday.
But another way of looking at it is that the party’s position is close to a miracle after he inherited the fewest Labour MPs since 1935, after Boris Johnson’s Tories thrashed Labour at the polls three and a half years ago.
Bread, not circuses, will determine how most people vote next time.
They’ve gone stale on the Tories, rejecting the crumbs dropped from the staggeringly rich PM’s table.
If Starmer uses his loaf and comes up with fresh goods this autumn, and a basket load more next year, the keys to No10 will be his. And he knows it. That’s not triumphalism.
It’s reading a country fed up with the Tories and yearning for hope.
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TORY hopes that vile racism and playing wild anti-woke cards would save them are dead. Sunak’s “stop the boats” hysteria sank in Dover, where Labour won the council. Starmer’s party also won gains in Thurrock, where cynical Suella Braverman defended a pub, since closed, displaying deeply offensive dolls. Britain’s a better country than the Conservatives think it is.
AN old dog you can’t teach new tricks, Tory veteran John Redwood demanding hefty tax cuts to save his party was predictably potty. The Wokingham MP has learned nothing from backing slasher Liz Truss.