“Don’t vote Labour,” says unelected snake oil salesman Rishi Sunak, about an election he hasn’t even called yet. “Because Labour will take us back to square one.” As John Crace, the Guardian’s sketch writer put it yesterday, “Because Square Two was going so well.” Nearly everyone is worse off than they were 14 years ago when the Conservatives came to power, yet Sunak still claims to be the “change” candidate. Just wait until he finds out which party has been in government since 2010.
For those of you, and increasingly those of me, who hate politics, then all I can say is you ain’t seen n-n-nothin’ yet. We may have as long as a year of this pretend campaign, like yesterday when Sunak took his taxpayer funded helicopter to Accrington to tell local Tory members – sorry, ordinary members of the public (it was Tory members) – to tell them that the problems of Britain are down to 14 years of Labour opposition. Keir Starmer will undo all the progress we’ve made. What a tag line.
Well, I hope Starmer will take us back to square one. You know, when there were no hospital waiting lists, when you could actually get a GP appointment, when there were barely any food banks, where are rivers weren’t open sewers, where we had Sure Start, where we were friends with mainland Europe, when the government had some level of control over asylum cases. Who would want to go back to that?
No, says Sunak. What we really need is more anger and division. We need more liars, like him. Being kind to one another is so yesterday. What we really need is not to love thy neighbour but to kick him when he’s down.
I could write so much more about this and in the coming months, I’m sorry to say, I will, but Sunak could end this phoney war and call a general election today. I appreciate there will be those among you who relish living in a broken and isolated country which is fast becoming the laughing stock of the world and where nothing works. But I rather think we’re better than that.
It’s getting very silly now. The prime minister, whom no one elected and was actually defeated by Liz Truss when Tory members were asked to choose between them, seeks to blame the people who are utterly blameless for the mess this country is in. I wonder where he is flying today?
