As the evening progressed, the local elections heralded a great election for Labour. Think about having drinks after work, kissing the co-worker you’ve been flirting with for months and ending up back with theirs. That was Labor in the early hours of Friday morning, while the Tories looked like the halitosis-ridden guy who’s been working in an office for years and who no one wants to talk to, let alone kiss.
But as Britain wakes up to the very real prospect of a Labor government today, Tory voters must surely be asking themselves whether this one-night stand – whether with Labour, Reform or, God forbid, the Liberal Democrats or the Greens – really is. wedding material. Because make no mistake: if you sleep with one of these parties, you will be in a cabin with Sir Keir Starmer for at least four years, and possibly ten. Let that sink in: a decade of Labour.
Believe me, I can understand the deep-seated feeling of betrayal that has driven people into the arms of the nose knight. With his touch of Brylcreem and love of the Arsenal terraces, I can see the appeal of this self-styled ‘man of the people’ compared to preppy billionaire Rishi Sunak, with his patronizing five-point plans and his £180 ‘smart mug’. When it comes to annoyingly opinionated politicians who have no good vision for Britain, there’s barely a fagot between them (not that any of them would even dream of smoking a bun).
In fact, the level of apathy is so great that some previously willful Tories have now become definitively apolitical. Faced with the alternative prospect of a threesome with Richard Tice and Nigel Farage, they have decided not to vote at all. I get it, honestly I get it too. But those voters are mistaken if they believe that a socialist like Starmer, who supported Jeremy Corbyn for four years, seriously represents continuity conservativism. I appreciate Sunak is wet, but come on.
When the sum of all these protest votes inevitably results in two red lines on the political pregnancy test in October or November, the Conservatives will realize they have given birth to a monster.
A Labor term will leave us with the kind of unruly brat that even Supernanny would struggle to take the mischievous step with. Forget Doctor Spock: this awful guy would rather stick his fingers in his ears than listen to reason. Or maybe it will be like living with Kevin the Teenager – but in a 21st century version, complete with pronouns, protests and endless requests for more spending money.
If they are not pushed onto the world stage by Donald Trump, they will desperately try to ingratiate themselves with the ‘adults’ in the civil service, the Treasury, the EU, the international courts and all other institutions where Civil Servants seem to think that they know better than everyone else. As if that weren’t bad enough, they will be joined by a cabinet that will freak out about policy so much that even a tranquilizer won’t touch the parties.
Worried about the cost of living? Don’t worry, Ed Miliband of bacon sandwich fame will be there to spend your hard-earned money on Greta Thunberg’s Christmas list.
Worried about immigration? Have no fear: Yvette Cooper will be here to negotiate return deals with the Taliban, Bashar al-Assad and Ali Khamenei. That, of course, is when she’s done tearing up the illegal migration law and the Rwanda deal – even if this ultimately holds up the boats. She will “crush” the smuggling gangs, but not until she has finished explaining that under Labor there are no economic migrants, only “people fleeing persecution”.
And since their friends at the Office for Budget Responsibility have already projected a legal migration rate of 350,000 over the next five years, there’s really nothing Labor can do about that, right? Do you want a limit on the numbers? Never mind. This is the party that inherited the net migration of around 60,000 in the 25 years to 1997 and set us on a course that will see it increase by 100 to 6 million over the next 25 years.
Those who run their own businesses will be able to rely on Labour’s “New Deal for Workers” to overhaul what one of their many union paymasters has wrongly described as “some of the worst employment rights in Europe”. Then they won’t be too busy pandering to striking workers, renationalizing the railroads, and taxing everyone who creates any wealth in this country.
Driving a car? You can look forward to a mileage charge unless you’re willing to drive an electric vehicle, but don’t count on charging anywhere. Hoping for an end to the culture wars? You can bet that Labour’s ‘rising stars’ Wes Streeting and Shabana Mahmood have finally decided that trans women aren’t women after all. They may not get it right, folks, but at least they get it last.
It does not help, however, to take comfort in the idea that Starmer may only win a small majority. A slim majority may abandon him for the hard-left idiots and pro-Palestinian fanatics, making the prospect of his fruitcake government even crazier. And when polling guru Professor John Curtice points out that “these are reasonable but not earth-shattering results” for Labour, we should really be concerned.
As the country’s leading psephologist noted: “It remains the case that Labor is not on track for the kind of truly dramatic local election performance that they achieved under Tony Blair before the 1997 general election.”
This is because the Labor leader not only lacks Blair’s personality, but also his moderate politics. Unlike his Thatcherite predecessor, who won two terms precisely because he was not an anorak-wearing pinko, Starmer has described himself as a ‘red-green’ socialist.
This is a man who has suggested in the past that unions should have had control over the “industry and the community.” As a socialist lawyer, he once wrote that “Karl Marx was of course right.”
He may then have tried to pretend he didn’t have these tendencies by harping on patriotism and the St. George flag – but we saw his true colors during the pandemic, when he advocated increasingly draconian lockdown measures. He’s not some cuddly Blairite (if such a thing exists), he’s a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
The Tories only have to look at Wales, Birmingham and even London to see how poorly these kinds of virtuous leftists are running things. And Labor will not inherit a golden economic legacy either. When Blair came to power, inflation was 2.6 percent, unemployment was 1.6 million and falling, and the economy had grown for almost twenty quarters in a row. We now face the reality of a Labor government spending big – without money. That can only mean higher taxes. It’s going to be a bloodbath… of conservative make.