People care more about efficient leadership than bogus greenery

GOSH, THE Tories must have the wind up. They have decided that they are perceived to be “uncaring”. This would be hilarious if it were not so pathetic.

Have they not realised that it is in the natural order of things for the Tories to be thought uncaring? After all, I worked for 11 years, two months and five days – and I wasn’t counting – for the most “uncaring” politician of all time: Margaret Thatcher.

In fact, she cared deeply about Britain and its people but had difficulty showing it. This was because she had no time for touchy-feely, politically correct presentation that requires you to emote regularly in public and caressingly soothe the populace – but not ladies’ knees, thank you – by chucking their money back at them.

So does Theresa May, who has similar difficulty appearing caring even though her first words before entering No 10 were dedicated to working for the many and not just the few.

Surely the Tories have realised by now that they cannot compete with Labour in the caring stakes because, with the moderate Left cowed into silence, it has lost all touch with reality and seeks only emotively and, of course, caringly to bribe the electorate on a grand scale.

It is safe to say that Jeremy Corbyn will ruin what is left of the NHS as well as the nation with his unbridled spending. Indeed, I would argue that Mrs May and the Tories will reasonably be classed as uncaring if they do not prevent Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, getting their hands on government.

Let me be clear: I don’t want my government to be caring. I want it to be efficient in doing what only governments can do: protecting the realm, the currency and the weak and upholding law and order. The rest is up to us – you and me.

We and not some nebulous thing called society are in the end responsible for the national condition.

Governments can best help us today by running a sound economy that enables us to increase prosperity generally.

Having said that, I have no objection to some of the ideas for “rebranding” the Tories to make them appear caring now being canvassed in a paper circulating in Whitehall.

State education does need improving to help the young and the economy. I want to see rank injustice rooted out and the excesses of irresponsible capitalism curbed. I am all for lower taxes, though there is not much room for them until we have balanced our budget.

Of course, much of this rebranding will depend on whether Mrs May can bring home a reasonable Brexit settlement, always assuming that the EU knows the meaning of the word.

But I am alarmed at what seems to be a central plank in this caring rebranding process: concern for the environment. If that means ridding the seas of their plastic rubbish, cleaning up Britain and stopping the city of Sheffield from felling urban trees like the mad axeman, then go to it. Have Sheffield’s councillors never heard that plant life feeds on carbon dioxide?

But if all caring means is reducing CO2 emissions at any cost – as is the prevailing wont in the dangerous drift from fossil fuels – then the Tories have not a price of being regarded as caring.

We would certainly be healthier with less pollution but a lot of old folk will be sick unto death if reducing it results in power cuts during a bad winter.

Yet that is a distinct possibility because of a policy that blights land and seascapes with unreliable wind turbines and solar panels at enormous cost – anything from £90-£200 a year on our energy bills, depending on who is counting.

It is no good government trying to appear caring if, at the same time, it is subsidising unreliable sources of energy such as wind and sun; bribing diesel and gas generators to have equipment on standby when the wind doesn’t blow; and, to cap it all, compensating wind power producers when, with the wind blowing steadily, they have to shut down because they are generating too much power for the grid.

All this so-called caring environmentalism is raising both industrial and domestic costs and imperilling jobs because of the absurd notion that you can only be seen to care for the planet if you are doing something, anything, however uneconomic.

Come on Mrs May. Show us your all-round caring nature by telling the sham environmental movement where to put their “care”.