Editorial Comment:

The Tories are paying the price of conceding so many of Labour’s arguments on the economy

The Tories have got to hammer home the flaws in Corbyn the man and his giveaway manifesto

The Tory wobble is finally upon us. In most elections there is a moment when the leading party takes a tumble in the ratings, and yesterday the country awoke to a Yougov poll showing the Tory advantage cut to just five points. Should the Conservatives panic? No. On the contrary, they must exploit this news to the fullest – to focus the minds of the voters on the question that really matters. Do they want Theresa May or Jeremy Corbyn to run the country?

Mrs May has said all along that this is the only choice, and she is right. Ukip has collapsed; the Lib Dems have failed to revive. The country is broadly settled on Brexit and perceives Mrs May as the person best qualified to deliver it. For a while, the Tories floated high on a new national consensus.

What began as a leadership election, however, soon changed. Labour launched a manifesto that was poorly costed and archaic, yet populist. The Conservative manifesto, by contrast, was defined by a worthy but ill-conceived pledge to reform social care. Suddenly, the election became about pocketbook issues – and the Tories lost their advantage not only by offering a controversial policy but by performing a strenuously denied but blindingly obvious U-turn on it.

This newspaper has long advised the Tories against moving to the Left, and it is now obvious that they are paying the price of conceding so many of Labour’s arguments on the economy. If the election is to be a competition between Labour and the Conservative Party over who offers the most welfare goodies, Labour will win. However, the appeal of Mr Corbyn’s giveaway manifesto may lessen in the wake of the dreadful Manchester attack. Voters will be looking once more for serious national leadership – and Mrs May still stands head and shoulders over her opposition on that score.

Yesterday, Mr Corbyn decided to play party politics with the Manchester tragedy. He delivered a speech in which he described British foreign policy as one of the chief causes of terrorism. This claim was both inaccurate and cheap. It also demands a review of Mr Corbyn’s record. It is one thing to suggest that Western foreign policy has consequences. It is another to conclude – as the Labour leader almost always has throughout his career – that the guilty West must sit on its hands.

In an interview last night, Mr Corbyn repeatedly failed to clarify if he would keep Trident or not, and when pressed on his links to hardline Irish nationalists merely repeated his unconvincing mantra about seeking peace. During the Troubles, Mr Corbyn picked a side and lobbied for it. He has also refused to commit to the use of drone strikes against terror suspects, once called Nato a “major problem”, labelled the killing of Osama bin Laden a “tragedy” and said that it would be nice if every politician in the world could abolish their army.

The Tories should not be shy about pointing all of this out. They should also return to the issue upon which this election was first fought: Brexit. The Conservative position is to enter negotiations tough-minded, united and willing to walk away from a bad offer. The Labour position is the worst of all worlds. Straddled between Leavers and Remainers, the party does promise to honour the EU referendum result but insists that it would never walk away from the table without a deal – a concession to the Europeans that would leave the UK negotiating team impotent. And whereas the Tories promise a review of imported European legislation and to sign free trade deals, Labour would keep some of the worst aspects of EU law on the books and tie the country to a high tax, high spending, bureaucratic agenda that would kill growth and jobs.

This is all presuming that a Corbyn cabinet would be able to get anything done at all. If the issue is leadership then the Tories only have to note how many shadow ministers have resigned from Mr Corbyn’s front bench, that his MPS tried to bring him down in a leadership challenge, that agreement over the party’s present defence policy is hard to find or that one Labour MP even said that he could not bring himself to make the case for putting Mr Corbyn in Number 10.

Indeed, it is possible that this bump in the polls is the worst thing that could happen to Mr Corbyn, because it makes Tory voters more likely to come out to oppose him. Labour’s strong polling in 1992 is often credited with John Major’s re-election that year. But the very fact that someone so uniquely unqualified to be prime minister could attract more than a third of the vote indicates that Mr Corbyn cannot be left alone to damn himself. The Tories have got to hammer home the flaws in the man and his manifesto.

The Manchester attack showed how high the stakes are in this election. The prosperity and future of this country are on the line. What Mr Corbyn offers is a retreat into socialist isolation, which will translate into insecurity and poverty.