Election clock is at a minute to midnight but there is still time for Rishi and the Tories to avoid the iceberg
SOMETIMES when watching true-life disaster movies like Titanic or Gallipoli, it’s hard to suppress an absurd hope it might somehow turn out differently.
All the victims need to do is wake up, seize the moment and steer away from catastrophe.
Rather, we see them repeating the same mistakes and expecting things to turn out differently — a definition of insanity.
Which sums up the Tories as they face apparent extinction.
Supporters shout at the screen, urging them to change tactics, put up their fists and punch Labour where it hurts.
Instead we watch Rishi Sunak under “friendly fire” from his own side while Labour gets away with murder.
Take this week’s PM’s Questions when Rishi reminded Keir Starmer of his countless U-turns, including his persistent refusal to define a woman.
This single issue — the denial of a fundamental biological truth — sums up Sir Shifty’s alarming capacity for duplicity and deceit.
It has nothing to do with the tragic murder of teenager Brianna Ghey or the presence, somewhere in the House of Commons, of her mother Esther.
Yet Rishi was howled down by hysterical Labour MPs — and a few of his own including wannabe successor Penny Mordaunt — in an explosion of confected outrage.
The truth is that Labour is terrified of being found on the wrong side of this barbed wire.
Gender is not a matter of taste or sensitivity, it is a hot-button common sense issue which moves voters.
Labour found out the hard way last month, losing a rock-solid seat on London’s left-wing Hackney Council to a Tory who grabbed a shock 53 per cent of the turnout.
Harsh lesson
Labour had enraged voters by suspending candidate Laura Pascal for rightly insisting a trans woman is “by definition” a male.
Pascal was reinstated as the storm burst, but too late.
In another richly deserved blow, Labour missed out in the Uxbridge by-election following Boris Johnson’s exit — thanks to London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s vicious Ulez vendetta against motorists.
Voters simply hate Labour’s stance on “green crap”, diversity and especially immigration.
These are the issues which resonate with Tory waverers.
They are crying out for a reason to believe this clapped-out Tory regime is still in the game after 14 years of drift.
Along with millions of Labour voters, they worry about a twister like Sir Shifty becoming their next PM.
After last week’s sensational decision to scrap its “unbreakable” 24-carat pledge to squander £28BILLION A YEAR on “green crap” — more costly than the HS2 fiasco — how can anyone trust Labour to run the country?
The idea we can thank sensible Rachel Reeves — already hailed as Labour’s next leader — is another Labour fiction.
The Shadow Chancellor backed dotty Ed Miliband’s plan from the start and actually flew to America to sell it as a tribute to senile President Joe Biden.
It was dumped solely because voters were taking note.
And there are plenty more targets for the Tories.
Mass immigration at up to 745,000 a year comes top of the list.
Along with crashing our health and social services, it is part of the housing crisis that is costing young votes.
The Tories should instantly ban migrant families from shooting to the head of the housing list.
Now Corbynite leftie Angela Rayner has unleashed a wish-list of workers’ rights under pressure from Labour’s trade union paymasters.
Rat-infested
Freedom to strike without a shopfloor vote, more job protection, longer maternity leave, the right to work from home . . . you name it, Angie will dish it out.
At a price.
Those tempted by Labour’s pork-barrel politics will pay in lost jobs and endless strikes.
For millennials, the 1970s is ancient history.
But this was a bleak decade, with public sector workers perpetually on strike and rat-infested rubbish piled high in the streets.
Here we go again.
Thanks to those of us with longer memories, we don’t need to look in a crystal ball to predict life under Labour.
We only have to look in the rear-view mirror.
It’s a minute-to-midnight on the election clock.
But there is still time for the Tories to steer away from the iceberg.
Turn right, Rishi.
Boris May Day nonsense
THE idea that Rishi Sunak will pick up the phone and make a May Day call to Boris Johnson is for the birds.
True, despite the Covid frolics and questions over his ability to tell truth from fiction, BoJo remains a vote-whisperer phenomenon.
But even he would be hard- pressed to turn this one around.
In any case, the Brexit-winning ex-PM is not in the business of helping Rishi win elections.
His plan is to follow Donald Trump and one day make a triumphant return to high office.
If Boris were to make that call, it would effectively be to tell Rishi that it’s all over and he might just as well give up the ghost.