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EXPRESS COMMENT

TODAY WE CAN GIVE BROWN A HARSH LESSON IN POLITICS

Thursday May 1,2008

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Gordon Brown has spent most of his career dodging the verdict of voters and instead boosting his power by stitching-up cosy deals behind closed doors.

Even within the past year he has ratted on the promise of a referendum on the European Constitution and ditched plans to seek a proper mandate via an early general election.

Today, at last, his ability to evade the electorate runs out. In many parts of the country voters go to the polls in local elections. The biggest set piece battle takes place in London where the Conservatives have mounted their strongest ever challenge for the mayoralty.

In the capital and elsewhere there are many compelling reasons for voters to teach Mr Brown’s Labour Party a harsh lesson. Massively excessive taxation, soft justice, falling living standards and blithering incompetence are just a few.

Many people will vote as much on local issues as national ones. But here there are sound reasons to vote Conservative too. Many local authorities have become dominated by political correctness and lost sight of their central mission: to deliver decent and good value essential services.

But Tory councils are, in general, less guilty of this than Labour ones.

A year ago many readers of this newspaper might have voted for the Conservative Party simply because it was the
main opposition to Labour.

But since then its leadership has reached out to hard-working Middle Britain – embracing the inheritance tax crusade of this newspaper and a wider tax-cutting agenda, acknowledging that excessive immigration is damaging the country and emphasising the need to get tough on crime and raise disciplinary standards in schools.

As a consequence it is possible to endorse David Cameron’s party with real enthusiasm. A Conservative triumph in today’s contests will not only give Mr Brown a political bloody nose but can also mark the begining of the end of the long persecution of the middle classes by his low-grade socialist administration.