Let’s burst Corbyn’s bubble, says Davidson
RUTH DAVIDSON argued that the Tories can burst the “Corbyn bubble” if they stop bickering, unite behind Theresa May and start taking the fight to the Labour leader.
In a rallying cry to the Conservatives’ conference in Manchester yesterday, the Scottish Tory leader said she had watched with “incredulity” the claims that Mr Corbyn was a “shoo-in” for Downing Street following last week’s Labour gathering.
She predicted Mr Corbyn would meet the same fate as Nicola Sturgeon, whom she said was also lauded as being politically “irresistible” only for the SNP to come “crashing down to earth” in June’s snap general election.
Ms Davidson warned there was no short-term fix for the Tories’ travails but they could turn round the situation through “grafting hard”, a clear enunciation of Conservative values and “serious” policies to help the “job-juggling generation”.
She argued that the Conservatives had to base their case on “country, duty, service and the power of people”.
In contrast, she predicted that voters would tire of Mr Corbyn offering them “free unicorns” and “easy promises that don’t add up”.
During an impassioned climax to the speech, which drew by far the loudest cheers of the conference’s first day and a standing ovation, she repeated the mantra that the Tories had to “unite and fight”. In an appeal to heal the party’s rifts over Brexit, she said: “It’s time we in this party made it clear that we’re not Leavers or Remainers anymore – we’re just Brits.”
Her plea for unity “behind our Prime Minister” came after she disclosed text messages with Boris Johnson in an attempt to quash claims of a rift between the pair and move the conference’s focus away from what she described as the leadership “psychodrama”.
The Scottish Tory leader denied she was referring to the Foreign Secretary in a newspaper interview at the weekend in which she attacked the “overoptimism” of some Brexiteers.
She disclosed they had exchanged messages sympathising with each other, with Ms Davidson accusing The Times of having written a headline claiming she had attacked Mr Johnson “before they even conducted the interview”.
Amid speculation over who will succeed Mrs May, Ms Davidson told the conference she had “no plans” to move to London, but set out her strategy for reversing the surge in Mr Corbyn’s popularity.
Despite having his name chanted at Glastonbury, she said the Labour leader “hasnae even won a raffle yet”. She drew parallels with the SNP surge in 2015 and said she had watched Ms Sturgeon sell out rock venues and sell “foam fingers to the faithful so they could point at the sky as she flew in a helicopter she’s slapped her face on”.
But Ms Davidson pointed out the SNP lost half a million votes and 40 per cent of their seats in the June election, with their independence dream now a “busted flush”. She concluded: “So too can the Corbyn bubble burst, but only if we work hard to make it so.”
She said the Tories could beat Labour with a “clear set of values” – providing good schools, a strong economy, well-funded public services and offering voters the chance “to keep more of their own money because they make better decisions for their family’s future than the state makes for them”.