And a contact poll’s suggesting that support for the government has dropped still lower and is currently down to 15%, and Keir Starmer is now odds on with the bookmakers to be the next UK PM.
But here’s the hidden danger. The General Election will not be held right now. It won’t be held tomorrow, and it won’t be held next week. Even when Parliament (at last!) resumes today, it would take 36 Conservative MPs to cross the floor to force a General Election.
Given the news this morning of the need for a third intervention by the Bank of England to deal with “a material risk to UK financial stability” (the Bank of England’s words, not mine) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ warning of up to £60 billion of cuts to what’s left of our living standards, that may be less unlikely than it was just yesterday. But even if it happens, a General Election takes time to arrange.
And what’ll happen in the meantime? A lot of Tory voters will think better of it. They’ll persuade themselves the party’s going to find a better leader, see the error of their policies, maybe even develop a social conscience, or at least remember how to add up costs and benefits.
And even if they don’t, the habits of a lifetime will kick in. Those who were only swayed towards the Tories by the promises of 2019 may well go back to their previous allegiances, but those who’ve always voted Tory will find it hard to vote for someone else this time.
And, especially, they’ll find it hard to vote for Labour. They always do.
That’s why, no matter what the polls and betting markets say, we still need a Progressive Alliance. The reason why we have a Tory government right now (and why we’ve had so many of them in the past) is not because the country wants them — even in the so-called landslide win in 2019 they only got 43.6% of the vote. That’s not impressive.
The reason why they are in government’s because the non-Tory majority of voters, as so often before, was so divided. In seat after seat, if the anti-Tory vote had been combined, the Tory candidate would been sent packing, in many cases minus their deposit.
We cannot risk that happening again.
The country can’t afford another four years of a Tory government happy to starve the poor to profit the already-rich. To shred the rights of working people. To tear up laws on health and safety, welfare and food standards. To scrap our online privacy in favour of “Big Data”.
And, worst of all, to privatise the NHS.
If the party leaders won’t, or because of the way their constitution’s written perhaps can’t, agree not to contest seats where another anti-Tory candidate has a better chance of winning, then we’ll simply have to do it for them. We need to vote for the non-Tory candidate best-placed to take the seat. That may not be the candidate we would most like to vote for. This time around, that’s not the point.
Before we can make any kind of progress out of the quagmire this government has got us into we need to get the Tories out of power, and to do it we need co-operatate with those from other parties who feel likewise.
There’ll be Twitter accounts to follow that will show which non-Tory candidate in each constituency is the one with the best chance of winning the seat.
You’ll be doing a massive service to the country if you’ll vote for yours.
