The horrifying price of Tory failure
A kinder, gentler politics. You have to pinch yourself to remember this was what Jeremy Corbyn promised when elected Labour leader. After its conference this week, his words are no more than a sick joke.
For as every day proved, the hard Left’s takeover has infected the party with a virulent strain of intolerance.
On Monday, activists clapped along when panellists at a fringe meeting likened supporters of Israel to Nazis. One speaker suggested Labour should be free to debate whether the Holocaust had happened.
On Tuesday, a Trotskyist faction accused the head of the Jewish Labour Movement of being a ‘hard-Right racist Zionist’, while the party was censured by the equalities watchdog for not tackling anti-Semitism.
Then on Wednesday, Mr Corbyn’s speech offered not one word of apology, and risibly hailed the conference’s ‘spirit of unity, love and affection’.
If any Mail readers still question the scale of Labour’s anti-Semitism problem – or the extent to which its leaders tolerate their followers’ worst excesses – they need look no further than Red Len McCluskey, who claimed the entire controversy was ‘mood music’ designed to undermine Mr Corbyn.
But the hatred and enmity did not end there. As we reveal today, at a meeting hosted by Momentum, MP Clive Lewis deployed a sickening Nazi slur which – though he denied it – was clearly aimed at this government.
With such overwhelming evidence, there should be no doubt in the public’s minds that Labour is the real nasty party. Nor should there be any doubt that its policy programme of State control of the economy, 1950s-style rent caps and all power to the unions is unremittingly Marxist and would bankrupt the country.
Certainly, the scales should have fallen from the eyes of those foolhardy business leaders who trooped off to Brighton to cosy up to Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who was honest enough to admit he expects to provoke a run on the pound if he ends up in the Treasury.
Yet the fact remains that to his loyal supporters, to many voters who have felt the squeeze following the financial crash, and particularly to the under-40s who have no memory of the Winter of Discontent, Mr Corbyn has a superficial appeal.
Which brings us to the challenge facing the Tories as they gather for their conference, braced for a stream of invective from the inevitable Left-wing hate mob.
Theresa May set the right tone this week, as she – belatedly – made the case for free markets.
Today she warns of the disaster Corbynomics would inflict on the poorest. But after a survey revealed widespread support for wholesale nationalisation, there is clearly a long way to go.
Yes, there must be an election postmortem into party organisation and socialmedia campaigning, where the Tories were totally outgunned.
More than anything, the Conservatives must offer an optimistic vision of this country’s future. After her Florence speech, Mrs May has a strong story to tell about the opportunities of Brexit.
She must reaffirm her determination to give those who feel left behind a stake in society, deliver practical solutions to the country’s problems and prove that hers is the true party of aspiration.
Above all else, the party must be unified. For if the conference descends into infighting – gripped by bickering over Brexit or, even worse, disloyal posturing from pretenders to Mrs May’s throne – the Tories will already have lost.
The Mail is wary of hyperbole. But there is no other way to put it: If they let Corbyn win, it will be a disaster for Britain – and for the very people he professes to care for the most. For the Tories, the price of failure is too appalling to contemplate.