Tories are rattled and in despair – Reform UK will cause a sea change in British politics
In a situation where Labour is miles ahead and looking at a landslide victory, the Conservatives are pouring all their efforts into rubbishing Reform.
The Tories are both rattled and despairing, not without cause. So what do they do? Produce some eye-catching new policy? No. They mutter on about changing the leader yet again, unable to see that all that would achieve is yet more division and public ridicule.
In a situation where Labour is miles ahead and looking at a landslide victory, do they focus on the enemy charging right at them? No, they pour all their efforts into rubbishing Reform without even stopping to ask why people are so attracted to its new broom or why voters are so thoroughly fed up that they are deserting the major parties.
In short they focus on the messenger not the message, which is causing their problems. Their current chaos has many roots: the sharp decline in quality of MP resulting in benches packed with panickers and plotters, a dearth of new ideas, the escalating triviality of press and media and the staleness of a long term of office together with a desertion of core values such as freedom of speech, common sense, control of our porous borders and proper maintenance of our armed services.
About every 100 years or so there is a sea change in British politics, as happened for example in 1900 with the formation of the Labour Party. It is happening again with the challenge presented by Reform.
Vote Tory, get Keir Starmer. Labour is going to win the next election anyway whether with a big majority or a vast one. Starmer is not responsible for that – the Tories are. The only answer is to break the mould and vote for change.
The other day I commented sadly to a former colleague that I could not believe what had happened to the party to which I had given 55 years of my life.
He replied “It has gone. The party we knew and served simply isn’t there any more. It died years ago.”
He is totally right. RIP the once mighty Conservative Party, but at least there is a phoenix rising from the ashes... and it is called Reform.
Duty calls for the Prince of Wales this Easter
How lovely to see the King out and about on Easter Sunday but what a pity the Prince of Wales was not there too, preferably with his children or at least Prince George.
It would have been wonderfully reassuring for the stability of the monarchy and he could have returned immediately to spend the rest of the break with Kate.
A lot of people are living in hell dealing with a loved one’s cancer but have somehow to keep going.
Duty calls, Sir.
What sort of human offers to eliminate a disabled child from the school photograph?
On Saturday this paper revealed the harrowing tale of a school photograph, which was offered with the special needs children removed. In what sort of age is the photographer living? 1930s Germany? What sort of human being offers to eliminate from the record a child with a wheelchair? How did he or she expect the children and parents to feel?
School photos are joyful records of a moment in time, of cheerful innocence, of fun and classmates. Most of us come upon them occasionally and then have fun seeing how many names we remember or recalling incidents and characters. Of course, some people are more photogenic than others. At Oxford there would be a termly portrait of the Union’s officers and committee. One girl, who was very bright, always had a fixed, startled stare as if the man beside her had just made an indecent pass.
The photographer used to groan every term, while the rest of us giggled, but no one would have wanted an “alternative” photograph.
Yet we are not talking about being photogenic here, are we? We are talking about something much more sinister: being embarrassed by difference. What a damnable message to give a child.
No appetite for fast food farce
I do not usually engage in social media but a friend sent a clip of an incident on a bus where a lady was eating her lunch and an entitled, self-pitying young man told her not to do so because it was Ramadan, he was fasting and the smell of food was tormenting him.
She stood up to him magnificently and munched on.
I might as well go into a pub and demand that everyone drink orange juice because it is Lent and I don’t want to be tantalised by the smell of alcohol.
I am fairly certain that had there been an imam on that bus he would have told the whingeing idiot that being tempted is part of the penance. But I am also certain that had I been eating my lunch on a bus, my mother would have told me it was rude!
UN Women's Rights, you might as well ask Satan to lead a Royal Commission into sin
The UN must be one of the most ineffective bodies ever dreamt up by mankind. Wars and starvation rage on, while the UN pontificates pointlessly, fruitlessly and expensively.
The latest piece of nonsense to emanate from this expensive, time-consuming body is to put Saudi Arabia in charge of women’s rights! This is the country which finally got round to giving women the vote in municipal elections in 2015 and allowing them to drive in 2018. A woman must still obey her husband if she wants his financial support. She needs the permission of a male relative to marry and is prescribed a strict dress code.
That is Saudi Arabia’s business but if it is to chair the Commission on the Status of Women, then we are entitled to ask what possible claim it has to leadership of the rest of the world on this issue.
In the words of the late politician Iain Macleod, you might as well ask Satan to lead a Royal Commission into sin.
