Rue Britannia

The Conservative Party in Britain has the Labour Party by the throat in the upcoming snap election, and could wipe out Labour for a decade. This is largely because Labour has chosen Jeremy Corbyn as its leader, and Corbyn makes Bernie Sanders look like Jeb Bush by comparison.

So what does Tory Prime Minister Theresa May do with the chance to smash the Labour Party to bits? They’ve issued a campaign platform that will make Margaret Thatcher roll over in her grave. It is arguably to the left of Tony Blair’s governance. The Spectator tells the sorry story in “Red Theresa“:

Just two years ago the Tories were denouncing ideas such as an energy price cap as ‘Marxist’. Trying to fix prices, they said, was as naive as trying to legislate for the weather. Now price caps are Conservative party policy. In 2015, Ed Miliband’s plan for an £8 minimum wage was a job-killer that would render unemployed anyone whose skills were worth less than this sum. Now Mrs May is going for £9 an hour. And her published plans involve the tax burden rising to a 35-year high.

The Ed Stone, the much-mocked slab of limestone on to which Ed Miliband inscribed his agenda, was smashed up soon after the election. He ought not to have been so bashful. Within months, several of his ideas — a national infrastructure commission, grandparents sharing parental leave, that national living wage — had been adopted by Conservatives. The idea of taxing employers to fund apprenticeships was discussed before the Labour manifesto but didn’t make it in because Miliband thought it a step too far. It is now Tory policy. . .

So in many important regards, Mrs May is the most left-wing leader the Tories have had in perhaps 40 years. In normal times, this would set her at odds with the MPs on the right — the ones Sir John Major once referred to as the ‘bastards’, he sort of people for whom regicide is a form of relaxation. But now, they’re happy – even loyal. This is because the Thatcherite MPs are also those who are most committed to Brexit. For years, they regarded the whole idea of leaving the EU as a dirty fantasy and even today theycannot quite believe that it is coming true. For them, the national question — leaving the European Union and crushing the Scottish Nationalists — matters more than economics, or arguments about gas bills.

Worth reading the whole article. Hard to get excited about this slop. Not exactly the path to making Great Britain great again.

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