Labour? Let me talk about chocolate eggs

Labour are becoming irrelevant. As if further evidence were needed, just think about what Theresa May did yesterday. The night before, Labour had announced a new policy: charging VAT on private school fees to fund free meals for all pupils at state primaries.

And so, since the Prime Minister happened to be giving a speech yesterday (in Nottinghamshire, to launch the Tories’ local election campaign), a journalist took the opportunity to ask her what she had to say about it.

The answer was… nothing. She hadn’t given it a thought. Not for a moment. Simply hadn’t bothered.

She didn’t admit it, of course. But what she said made it nakedly obvious.

She didn’t explain why the policy was bad – indeed, she didn’t even refer to the policy at all. Didn’t mention it. Instead, all she did was trot out her standard, all-purpose line on Labour: that a government led by Jeremy Corbyn would “bankrupt Britain”.

“Just look at Jeremy Corbyn’s economic policies,” she recited, mechanically. “Schools would find themselves in a parlous condition, because of the way Labour would be running the economy.”

That was it. Not a word on the actual policy. She could have said it was a waste of money, because children from poor families already get free school meals, and the children of the better-off don’t need them. She could have said it was a cynical attempt to buy votes by offering unnecessary freebies to the middle class. She could have said it was a ploy by the Left to promote their ideological conviction that universalism is sacrosanct.

But she didn’t say any of that. Because, quite clearly, she doesn’t think that working on rebuttals to Labour is worth even 30 seconds of her time. Yes, this is the position Labour find themselves in today. The Prime Minister now feels so unthreatened by them that she puts more thought, passion and effort into answering questions about chocolate eggs than she does into answering questions about Opposition policy.

In recent weeks, Mr Corbyn has repeatedly accused the Government of “complacency”. He’s right. They are complacent. He should ask himself why that is. Perhaps with the aid of a mirror.

As for Mrs May’s speech on the local elections – that was pretty complacent, too. Fifteen minutes spent vacuously repeating that the Conservatives have “a plan for Britain”, while revealing precious little about what that plan might be. Her Government, she droned, believed in “fairness”, “ordinary working people”, “a better future”, “a stronger, fairer, better Britain”.

Well, yes, Prime Minister. All governments say they believe in those – no matter what party they are. The idea is to provide evidence that it’s true.

Honestly. I’d love a job as a Downing Street speech writer.

“My government believes that good things are good. Bad things, by contrast, are bad – and I’ll never shy away from saying so.”