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TONY PARSONS
A loveless landslide…now please don’t cock it up like the Tories, Sir Keir Starmer
In her 49-day tenure as Prime Minister, Truss managed to totally trash the party’s reputation for economic competence
IN THE end, 14 years of Conservative government collapsed under the weight of their own cock-ups.
“I take responsibility for the loss,” said Rishi Sunak, with grace, and grit, and a clearly breaking heart.
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And yes, Rishi — this campaign has been a catalogue of scarcely believable errors.
From the decision to skip out of the Normandy commemorations before the photoshoot with other world leaders, to the betting scandal, to the great miscalculation of calling a General Election when Sunak could have waited for five or six months when things could, er, only get better.
But Norfolk South West — where former PM Liz Truss lost one of the safest Tory seats in the country — reveals that responsibility for this historic Conservative loss goes back well beyond the man who has been PM for less than two years.
In her 49-day tenure as Prime Minister, Truss managed to totally trash the party’s reputation for economic competence.
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Before loopy Liz, Boris Johnson achieved an 80-seat majority, winning over the working class with upbeat chunter about “getting Brexit done” — then frittered away that once-in-a-lifetime mandate.
Boris remains the life and soul of the Conservative Party.
It is not inconceivable that he could resurface as a future Tory leader to unite a coalition of all the colours.
But make no mistake — there are many in this country who will never forgive BoJo for the insult of Partygate, when the lockdown rules that applied to the rest of us, including our newly widowed Queen, did apparently not apply to BoJo’s Downing Street underlings.
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Boris Johnson’s vision of post-Brexit bright, sunlit uplands was undoubtedly derailed by Covid and Ukraine.
But he also cocked it up big time.
Keir Starmer delivers his first speech as PM
And BoJo’s reign of chaos and waste ran up a bill that has been settled now, politically at least.
The bill that was paid in full on Thursday night goes all the way back past Theresa May’s reign of paralysis to David Cameron’s decision to call a referendum about the UK’s membership of the EU in 2016 in order to silence the Eurosceptic wing of his divided party.
Referendums — we know now — resolve nothing.
Referendums, as we saw in Scotland in 2014, only harden attitudes, emboldening the losing side.
Oh well, whatever chance Brexit ever had of succeeding is gone for ever now. It finally died under that Labour landslide.
And let it be said loud and clear, the Tories did not simply lose the General Election.
Labour emphatically won it.
Yes, they won it on a low turnout — just 60 per cent — in a country where millions are sick of all politicians.
Incredibly, Starmer won his landslide with some 600,000 fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn managed in his 2019 defeat.
Starmer won it on a reduced vote share.
This is not 1997. He is not Tony Blair.
Starmer won it because the nation was sick to the back teeth of 14 years of Tory chaos and because he was facing a bitterly divided Tory Party who squabble and bitch like children.
Rampant fruitcakes of Reform UK
Starmer won it because the fruitcakes of Reform UK were rampant, their voters apparently unconcerned that they are going to get exactly the opposite of what they voted for.
Starmer won it — this loveless landslide — without setting the pulses racing among his followers, as Boris did.
Starmer won it with no great expectations.
That may even work in his favour.
Behind that landslide stands a new Prime Minister who few expect to transform their lives.
Does anyone really expect Starmer to bring down immigration?
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It seems unlikely. But he won it, the first Labour victory since Blair had hair. And despite all the caveats, he won it big.
Sir Keir — dismissed as robotic, boring, an unloved Mr Flip-Flop who changes his views with the weather — has pulled off a historic victory.
After the Corbyn-led disaster in 2019, Starmer has made his Labour Party fit for government.
This is, without question, a stunning achievement.
In the morning after of 2019 there were plenty of commentators — like me — who believed that Labour were finished for ever.
But Starmer has not only rid the Labour Party of its looniest lefties, he has adorned himself in Union Jacks and said, “Country first. Party second” so often that millions believe he means it.
Party mum voted for
Starmer has made this Labour Party look like the Labour Party that my mother voted for all her life — patriotic, on the side of the working family, understanding that economic growth pays all the bills.
But let’s not get too starry-eyed.
I have always thought that Starmer is a decent man.
But I can’t quite forget he desperately tried to get Jeremy Corbyn elected twice — and really doesn’t like being reminded about it now.
And I can’t help but notice that the proposition “a woman can have a penis” is still a cause of heated debate in his party.
And there is the motley crew in Starmer’s Cabinet.
When Starmer says he will govern for all of our people — “whoever you are” — he sounds sincere and reassuring to me.
But, oh look, there is Deputy Leader Angela Rayner, who called the Tories “scum”.
Are the millions of people who voted Tory still “scum”, Angela?
Seriously, as someone who voted for his local Tory candidate, I would really like to know if Angela still thinks I am scum.
And when Rishi Sunak stood outside 10 Downing Street with his wife on Friday morning, making his resignation speech, did he look like “scum” to you, Angela?
And, oh look, there is Foreign Secretary David Lammy, who comically ascends to high office just as our closest ally, the United States of America, looks set to elect Donald Trump as its President, a man who Lammy has spat poison at for years.
Spat poison at
Is that all forgotten now?
AND is green goblin Ed Miliband – Secretary of State for Climate Change and Net Zero – going to come for your gas boiler now?
Is Ed going to make you buy an electric car?
And in the country that produces only one per cent of global emissions, are the lights actually going to stay on when Ed mercilessly whips us towards net zero?
But it would be churlish to not wish Keir Starmer well.
I hope — with all my heart — that “Country first. Party second” is more than a soundbite.
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I pray that the Starmer we see bathing in this glorious red dawn — patriotic, pragmatic, passionate — is the real Starmer at last.
We should all wish him well.
Starmer is ruthless, determined, and unafraid of totally changing his mind if he believes it will serve his immediate purpose.
And if he wants a closer relationship with the European Union, who can really object?
The great lie of Brexit was that there was a lucrative trade deal with the US just waiting to be made.
It did not happen, and it looks now like there was never any chance of it happening: 17.4million people — the largest mandate for anything in our history — voted on June 23, 2016, to leave the EU, and on July 4, 2024, the people gave their verdict on how the project is going.
Feel betrayed
And they feel betrayed.
Boris Johnson, finally rising with a sigh from his beach mat to deliver his one rousing campaign speech, boasted about Brexit allowing us to have the fastest Covid rollout in the world.
And Bojo is right. But is that it?
What about levelling up? What about controlling our borders? Didn’t happen.
The big promise of Brexit — that it would bring down immigration figures — has been proved laughably wrong.
Brexit was built on too many wild dreams, too much wishful thinking, too many cock-ups.
The dream is dead now.
Starmer is the resolute Remainer who called repeatedly for a second EU referendum.
As our last faith in Brexit ebbs away, I for one can see no reason why our shiny new Labour Government should not covet a closer relationship with our Continental cousins even as the EU goosesteps further to the hard right.
That EU we left increasingly looks as if it no longer exists.
And it will be interesting to see PM Starmer hanging out with France’s Marine Le Pen, Hungary’s Viktor Orban, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Holland’s Geert Wilders and the rest.
The EU is veering to the wilder shores of the hard right just as the UK installs a left-wing Government.
It will be far, far harder for the Tories to recover from 2024 than it was for Labour to come back from 2019.
Keir Starmer rebuilt his party by purging the nutters.
But the Tories, it is fair to say, do not know who their nutters are: Faragist Suella Braverman or one-nation Jeremy Hunt?
Which one is on the wrong side of history?
The Tory superpower was that it could embrace a broad church of beliefs. That broad church now looks like it has just been burned to the ground.
Should the Conservative Party become a Reform UK tribute act — or reclaim the centre ground?
British don’t like extremes
Only the latter offers any possibility of a path back to power one day — the British don’t like extremes — but I fear the party could opt for the former.
The night was about more than the Tories and Labour.
Jeremy Corbyn beat Labour in Islington North and will sit in the House of Commons as an independent.
Nigel Farage finally became an MP and it will be interesting to watch him divide his time between canapes in a Trump White House and his Clacton constituency.
After ten years of total power — built on losing the 2014 Scottish independence referendum — the SNP were almost obliterated in Scotland, thereby securing the Union in a way that no once-in-a-lifetime referendum ever could.
THE Lib Dems saw their number of seats soar, and Ed Davey dad dancing with abandon – although predictions they would become the official Opposition look a bit silly now.
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It is a fragmented national picture.
But, in the end, in our first-past-the-post nation, it is ultimately all about the Tories and Labour.
Watch those Labour bods who have believed so passionately in proportional representation quietly change their mind.
All dreams of PR drop dead in this red dawn. It is Keir Starmer’s country now.
He has promised that he is not going to raise income tax, National Insurance or VAT — which means that he will raise tax on everything else.
But the people have spoken!
Please don’t cock it up
The people who grew to hate — or totally despair of — these tired Tories.
The Conservative Party now needs a nice lie down.
This Labour Government will soon find that soundbites are not enough. Slogans are not enough.
Our people are deeply, deeply unhappy.
With NHS waiting lists. With soaring immigration. With the housing crisis. With the reluctance to admit that the housing crisis is perhaps exacerbated by soaring immigration. Strikes that last for ever.
Anti-social behaviour, from the shoplifting epidemic to knife crime to burglary.
Our great institutions — the police, the Church, the BBC — seem woefully out of touch.
But it is a great country. Never doubt it for a second.
Rishi Sunak was not voted out of office because of his race, religion or colour.
Nobody ever cared about any of that stuff. And now power will be transferred from Sunak to Starmer with grace, goodwill and mutual respect.
That is no small thing. We are not America. Thank God.
And we have so much to be proud of, in both our past and our present and future.
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It is a great country, Keir.
Please don’t cock it up.