'The Tories have broken Britain'

In 2009, Brown listed one of Labour's greatest achievements as being "the shortest NHS waiting lists in history". After 13 years of Tory "reforms", we've now got the longest waiting lists in history, plus the joy of knowing that whichever underpaid NHS employee next has to put a finger up your bottom will be doing so while teetering on the edge of a nervous breakdown.

In order to retain power, the Tories had to cut a deal with the loony Lib Dems, another with the wingnuts of the DUP, and even had to gratefully accept Nigel Farage's offer not to stand Brexit Party candidates in some of their seats.

Labour didn't do a deal with anyone, yet they keep being asked about which Mephistophelean contract they'd sign this time to grab power.

Tony Blair had such a thumping majority it took 13 years to erode. Boris Johnson won a landslide, and lost the backing of everyone except Nadine Dorries in just 2.5 years.

Tony Blair was accused of lying his way into a war that killed somewhere between 110,000 and 200,000 deaths, and destroyed the stability of a region that then witnessed the bloodthirsty rise of ISIS. It has stained his reputation forever, but not that of his party.

Boris Johnson was proven to have lied about his affairs, children, policies, personal finances, and that he attended and knew about illegal parties during lockdowns in a pandemic that killed 225,668 Brits, and maimed a million more. He and the Tories alike have been tainted by the VIP WhatsApp contracts as well as lockdowns that would not have been as long if they hadn't been so late.

Labour reforms meant an extra £18billion spent on benefits for poorer families with children, and an extra £11billion spent on pensioners, cutting poverty in both groups, improving life chances, nutrition, and hope.

Tory austerity took £14billion back out of welfare, and as a result everyone is worse off: according to the New Economics Foundation, the poorest working households have lost £746 a year while the richest have lost £605 a year.

It's got so bad that even one of the richest men in the country, with a household worth £730million, has been losing £500,000 a day, every day, for the past 12 months.

Under New Labour, we were told not to speak hate, not to be anti-social, and were guaranteed a minimum wage. Under the new Tories, reports of hate speech have increased, the number of people killed with a knife is at its highest for 76 years, and the minimum wage has risen - gasp - by £4.62.

Which is almost enough to buy a large block of cheddar cheese, that ex-Tory minister Ann Widdecombe will tell you not to eat. Tory MP Brendan Clarke-Smith will tell you not to eat baked beans, and Tory deputy chairman will tell you that you can eat a dinner for 30p, so long as it's half a bag of dried pasta and you don't need a saucepan, water, gas, electricity, an oven, or a home to cook it in.

New Labour introduced disastrous private finance deals which have riddled hospital trusts with debt, but we did at least get some new hospitals. Today there's one in Epsom which is literally underwater, and we're still waiting for the 40 new ones Liar Johnson promised.

We're also waiting for the Northern Powerhouse, HS2, a schools rebuilding programme, affordable housing, immigration in the 10s of thousands, a GP with time to see us, and the 8.05 to arrive on time for once, despite promises for all of the above in four Tory manifestos.

There is not a road that is not potholed. The only hospitals and schools that are not buggered are the ones you need a platinum AmEx card to enter. The only businesses doing steady trade are funeral directors and if you'd like to catch a bus, you'll need a very big net and a week camping out in the wild.

The tale of the tapes between 13 years of Labour and 13 years of Tory is not even due to competing ideologies. It's that Labour had a team of mostly-competents who decided to get into the weeds and change the fundamentals of how the country was run, and that the Tories had a PR man and a woman who thought running through wheatfields was a form of thuggery, followed by a pathological liar, an idiot, and someone who hasn't put petrol in his own car for the best part of two decades.

Iraq split the Labour Party into those who wanted to be statesmen and allies with the Americans, and those who thought that wasn't always the best idea. Brexit split the Tories into realists who had the experience to know that the EU could be blamed for everything, and must therefore be kept on at all costs, and fantasists who believed their own guff. The realists bailed or were defenestrated, and the fantasists took over - which is why the weeds have grown back as they titter and humbug their way through crisis and chaos, and pretend that something else knocked 5.5% off GDP.

The best we can hope for from Labour is anything rather than this. The best we can hope for from the Tories is a PM doing an inadvertent Morecambe & Wise impression, as light relief.

When Labour swept to power, there was hope. It faded over time to disillusionment, but for much of the way and for many people it seemed like things were going okay. When the Tories took over it was despite the fact the country wasn't sure, and over time the uncertainty has cemented into hatred.

For much of it, and for very many people, things have not been all okay, there's no sign of it becoming okay and if you asked them to lay a fiver on whether another Tory government would fix all this they'd laugh bitterly and tell you if they had one they'd spend it on cheese, just to piss off Ann Widdecombe.

When historians look at what New Labour did over 13 years, there'll be good and bad to weigh up: Sure Start vs radicalised Iraqi children. When they turn their attention to what happened after 2010, the only thing to put on the 'good' pile will be gay marriage, and a skit with Paddington Bear.

And very much on the 'bad' heap will be the fact that, as of Saturday, the Tories will have at least another year and a half in office, meaning they will have had more than 5,300 days to destroy the place, and will - if you weren't here - look to history like they surpassed New Labour's achievements.

Like Wilson Phillips said, hold on for one more day.