Boris can plan for a decade of reforms

PRIME Minister Johnson’s biggest debt is to Jeremy Corbyn – Mr Corbyn presented Boris Johnson with the keys to Numberten.

It’s important to remember the sheer scale of thetory victory, and Mr Johnson now has a wonderful opportunity to remake thetory party as a One Nation campaign.

But he had no greater ally in this than Mr Corbyn.

It’s quite clear that no one in Labour’s hierarchy spent any time canvassing. Person after person said, once they were asked, that Mr Corbyn was totally unacceptable as a prime minister and that, although they had voted Labour all their lives, they would not be voting for Mr Corbyn this time.

Labour’s promises of reform after reform added billions every day to the cost of a potential Labour government, and without seeming to realise it, the

‘Voters said Mr Corbyn was unacceptable’

hierarchy daily holed below the waterline that great ship called financial prudence that Labour had so carefully built.

While they talked a good game on austerity, the wicked cuts in the living standards of families inflicted by decreases in benefits since 2010 hardly featured in Labour’s two-year campaign up to the election.

Only, presumably after Labour’s private polls showed the size of the impending disaster, did this key issue begin to have an appeal to Labour’s leadership.

Labour’s leadership is not going to give up easily, however much their proposals are rejected by the electorate. This gives Mr Johnson the chance to begin 10 years of reform, as Labour will find itself in an impossible position.

Here is a great opportunity for those new MPS in working-class constituencies in the Midlands and in the North to help shape the PM’S One Nation strategy.

●Frank Field was MP for Birkenhead from 1979 to 2019. He resigned the

Labour whip in August 2018.