DAILY MAIL COMMENT: Why a Tory revival cannot come too quickly?
The hurly-burly’s done, the battle lost and won, and the Conservatives finally have a new leader. In Kemi Badenoch, they have chosen a relatively inexperienced candidate, but clearly one with great strength of character and will.
She will need those qualities in abundance over the next four years to revive her bruised, battered and bewildered party, and to regain the trust of disillusioned voters.
Having squandered a historic landslide majority by indulging in a pantomime of infighting and division, the Tories were not just given a bloody nose on July 4, they were eviscerated.
Their net loss of more than 250 seats was a record thumping and their parliamentary representation is down to a rump of just 121, the lowest in modern times.
The party must now regroup under Mrs Badenoch, face up to its shortcomings with humility and contrition, and rediscover a sense of common purpose.
Kemi Badenoch is relatively inexperienced but clearly has great strength of character and will
Just weeks after winning a massive majority, Labour is behind the Tories in the polls – a damning indictment of Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘changed’ party
The road back to power will be long and it will be tough but there is a route map. Labour campaigned as moderates. In just four months, they have shown themselves to be avaricious tax-and-spend socialists.
Tearing up their election manifesto, they have saddled Britain with £40 billion in extra taxes and plan to spend an additional £70 billion a year. This money will all have to be borrowed at eye-watering cost, with future generations having to foot the bill.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves admitted yesterday that she was ‘wrong’ to have said before the election that taxes would not have to go up but clung to the fiction that she had to increase them because of a ‘secret’ black hole left in the public finances by the Tories.
Humbug! Given the sheer scale of her assault on pensioners, farmers, businesses, landlords, house-buyers, private schools and many more, the idea it was not planned long in advance is risible.
She is fleecing the private sector to feed the insatiable appetite of the already bloated and inefficient state – without any call for reform or improved productivity.
Just weeks after winning a massive majority, Labour is behind the Tories in the polls – a damning indictment of Sir Keir Starmer’s ‘changed’ party. How quickly these charlatans have been found out.
But Mrs Badenoch can’t simply sit back and leave the Government to stew in its own juice. In the words of Margaret Thatcher when she was Opposition leader: ‘We want to be elected so we can do better, not because we couldn’t possibly do worse.’
The new leader must provide a truly Conservative alternative to Labour’s stifling socialist agenda.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves admitted yesterday that she was ‘wrong’ to have said before the election that taxes would not have to go up
Mrs Badenoch is right to be wary of being drawn in to minor early skirmishes with a Labour Government desperate to portray her as a creature of the hard Right
A low-tax, small-state, high-growth Britain which puts family front and centre, respects our history and institutions and upholds free expression.
With Reform also gaining ground, she must come up with a plan to slash migration, take a common-sense approach to Net Zero and maximise Brexit’s potential.
Mrs Badenoch is right to be wary of being drawn in to minor early skirmishes with a Labour Government desperate to portray her as a creature of the hard Right.
Opposition gives her the luxury of space to develop a broad and coherent policy platform around which all Tories can coalesce. The time for division and putting personal vanity before party is over.
Look how much damage Labour has done in just four months. Then, imagine what havoc it may wreak in the next four years. A Conservative revival is desperately needed. Let this be the start.
