The idea Labour have been blindsided by the scale of the debt they have inherited is silly. 'I don't think it's really very credible at all,' Institute for Fiscal Studies chief Paul Johnson charged. 'In terms of the scale of the problems facing public services, lots of individuals and organisations have pointed out that public services are performing considerably worse than they were pre-Covid.' The fact Reeves's faux pearl-clutching doesn't pass scrutiny isn't something that will unduly bother her, though. Because tomorrow's statement is primarily a piece of political theatre, rather than an economic one. ...read
Dan Hodges, Mail on Sunday's recent articles
DAN HODGES: Keir's no Che Guevara. This is a King's Speech that would have had Mrs Thatcher purring
For a brief moment, the Tories ' dilapidated attack machine sputtered back into life, writes DAN HODGES. 'The King's Speech was the most Left-wing in years,' the briefing declared. 'Nationalisation, new powers for the unions, abolition of heredity peers.' The Financial Times followed its lead. Sir Keir Starmer was portrayed sporting a Che Guevara beret, above an article heralding 'Starmer's never-ending insurgency'. The Prime Minister was set to embrace his 'inner radical', it claimed. Well if he is, that radicalism is set to be revealed via his political audacity, rather than the channelling of any great socialist ideology. Because the truth is that the new Prime Minister's first programme for government is one of the most conservative - and Conservative - ever unveiled by a Labour administration. ...read
DAN HODGES: The Tories are delusional if they think Starmer will falter quickly - and that voters will beg them to return
Sipping a glass of chilled Pol Roger at The Spectator magazine's annual summer party, the former Conservative Minister was in a surprisingly cheerful mood. 'There's too much doom and gloom about,' he told me. 'Starmer's majority is shallow. He's got a very tricky in-tray. In a few months, the problems will be piling up. The shine's going to come off. We'll be back in the game more quickly than people think.' It's not an isolated view. In the wake of their cataclysmic Election defeat, a significant number of Tory MPs have become inflicted by what can best be described as George The Third Syndrome. Or, for the more musically inclined, Hamilton Syndrome. In the hit Broadway show of the American Revolution, the recently deposed - and delusional - British monarch performs a comic turn. 'You'll be back,' he croons to his ungrateful former subjects. 'Soon, you'll see. You'll remember you belong to me.' Two hundred and fifty years later, the citizens of the US have yet to demonstrate any such buyer's remorse. And unless the Conservatives quickly come to appreciate the depth of the hole they're interred in, they could be facing a similar period of exile. Such introspection should begin with an acceptance they have underestimated Sir Keir Starmer and his party. ...read
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