Only one choice for former Labour voters

You can’t state the bleeding obvious often enough, so it was right for Mrs May to go to the North East on Friday and announce that if you are a sensible former Labour voter – in other words, not the sort of middle-class Trotskyist who has never grown out of posturing student union politics – then you really ought to vote Conservative.

Most people on low incomes aspire to something better for themselves and their children – and have the sense to know that being imprisoned in a welfare state will do nothing for their aspirations or social mobility.

The Tories do not need to flirt with statism or interventionism to appeal to such people. They just need to say that without incentivising entrepreneurs to take risks and encouraging greater productivity through cutting taxes there will be no growth in prosperity – and without such growth there won’t be sufficient tax revenues for essential public services.

Mrs May was also right to speak of the essential patriotism of many disillusioned Labour voters, whom Labour offends by its prevalent sense of disliking Britain, the British way of life and repudiating any sense of national identity.

And Labour offends against the values of most decent people in other ways too. Notably in its refusal to defend our country adequately, the hopeless mess it is in about nuclear weapons, and the love affair prominent Labour figures such as Mr Corbyn and his sinister shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, have with far-Left groups and terrorist organisations such as Hamas and the IRA.

As a party that indulges the fetishes of champagne communists, Labour can hardly be beaten. But since most “ordinary people”, as Labour patronisingly refers to them, don’t wish to live in a country that is bankrupt literally and morally, they should vote Tory without hesitation.