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If there is a crumb of comfort to be found for Rishi Sunak and his party, it is in the fact that not very many 2019 Conservative voters have actually switched to supporting Labour. What seems to be going on is that about half the Tory vote across Britain has simply gone on strike. When people go on strike there are generally two ways to respond: find new people or give the ones who have withdrawn a better offer to lure them back.<\/p>\n
I would strongly advise the Prime Minister to concentrate on the second option. Because the only new people are those on the left of politics and they would be more likely to boil their own heads than even consider voting for him.<\/p>\n
Delivering proper Conservative policies for Conservative-inclined voters is Sunak\u2019s only hope of avoiding a landslide defeat in next year\u2019s general election.<\/p>\n
Given that he has shown he cannot hold a candle to Boris Johnson as a campaigner and naturally veers towards caution rather than boldness, it\u2019s a long shot. Yet there are so many areas requiring drastic action.<\/p>\n
READ MORE: <\/strong> \u2018Tories are on course for hiding and they deserve it,\u2019 says Ann Widdecombe<\/strong><\/p>\n One social media post from a frustrated grassroots right-winger yesterday summed things up well: \u201cImmigration levels, both legal and illegal, are off the scale. The tax take is at a 70-year high. The civil service appears corrupted by wokery\u2026 The Met Police are a disaster.<\/p>\n \u201cThe roads are awful and the railways are seemingly permanently on strike. The Govern- ment persists with the insane net zero agenda. The NHS is basically non-functioning and Islamists are allowed to support Hamas at the Cenotaph a week after the worst pogrom since the Holocaust.\u201d<\/p>\n That Sunak went into the Tory conference believing a gradual raising of the legal smoking age and a long-term plan to reform A-levels would pass as big ideas at such a time beggars belief. It tells us that he should stop relying on a tight-knit team of young advisers and start tapping into the nous of senior Cabinet colleagues.<\/p>\n The same lesson can be drawn after the unravelling of his one genuinely impactful idea \u2013 cancelling the northern leg of HS2 and using the funds to invest in scores of medium-sized transport schemes instead. He probably should have announced that after a month in Downing Street, not nearly a year. But the fact that he kept Transport Secretary Mark Harper out of the loop for so long meant that there was no time to nail down the detail of a new \u201cNetwork North\u201d investment programme and several items featured in it turned out to be imaginary. Northern voters were right to wonder if they were being played for fools.<\/p>\n Sunak has three immediate shots in his locker and must use them all. First, a Cabinet reshuffle is due. He should use this to replace Chancellor Jeremy Hunt with a more convincing advocate of tax cuts.<\/p>\n Don’t miss… <\/strong>
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