CHRISTMAS is fast approaching and Conservative MPs are getting ready to head home to be with their families.
Yet in the dark recesses of their minds, they know that the sand in the re-election hourglass is running out fast.
Their worry is that a double-digit Labour poll lead seems insurmountable – but is it?
I don’t think so.
While Labour’s poll lead is a mile wide, I believe it is still only an inch deep.
There is no love out there for Sir Keir Starmer.
Our New Year resolution as Conservatives must be to fight Labour, not each other.
Rishi Sunak should come out swinging in January to give Labour a bloody nose at the election.
We can still win at the ballot box, and below I set out how I think we can.
First, Rishi should go after Sir Keir.
Starmer, even now, remains an enigma to the great British public.
They don’t have any idea who he really is and that which they do know, is contradictory.
Starmer is no Sir Tony Blair. Whatever else your views of Blair, in 1996 he had earned the change mantra, having already cleared out the hard left and appeared as a moderate Tory.
But Starmer cannot claim to have taken on the hard left in the same way.
He served in Jeremy’s shadow cabinet – even as many of his colleagues refused to.
He failed to publicly speak out and criticise the Labour leadership as the vile scourge of anti-Semitism ripped through the party.
He was the one who tried to call a second referendum on Brexit to defy the choice of the British public, yet now he says he has changed his mind.
This lack of a sense of who Starmer is, means that despite the enormous task of turning it around, the election isn’t over.
We need to go on the attack and show who Starmer and the Labour Party really are.
Second, we need to focus on economic growth.
After all the post Covid economic shocks, the economy isn’t growing enough. Part of the reason is high tax.
In 2024, on current forecasts, taxes will rise to around an unprecedented 37% of national income.
This coupled with the banks present high interest rates, runs the risk of killing growth.
That’s why the Chancellor has to be bold and take swift action to get taxes down, he’s made a start now we need to kick – start growth.
People need to feel better off and that the sacrifices are behind them.
Third, we need to get legal and illegal migration down.
In 2024, we have to ‘do what it takes’ to deliver on the Prime Minister’s pledge to stop the boats.
Although we have reduced illegal migration, the sight of the flights leaving the UK, going to Rwanda, will show the British people we mean business and will break the people smugglers business model.
By contrast, Labour’s policy is to get closer to the EU who will demand they take even more migrants.
Fourth, as the ‘ULEZ’ Uxbridge by-election showed, people don’t want to have to pick up the spiralling costs of the Net Zero targets, through their taxes.
They have already been squeezed enough. As the polling showed, when Conservatives back the public on this our polling improves.
Labour, now made up of green zealots, plan to administer a financial punishment beating by charging the British public at least an extra green cost of £28bn.
Fifth, we must take on the tyranny of the aggressive trans lobby and make it abundantly clear that biological adult females will be entitled to their safe spaces such as female toilets and hospital wards. It cannot be enough to simply self- identify as women.
The culture of ‘cancelling’ those brave women who have spoken out on this is an anti-free speech tyranny that must be ended.
Labour has been weak on this, so much so that many of these brave women feel unwanted in the Labour Party.
That fight is critical if we are to stop Labour.
If we land some heavy blows on Sir Keir on these crunch issues – highlighting the choice on the economy, on migration, on the punishing costs of Net Zero and the vile cancel culture that will harm our nation in the future – then we can win the next election.
The next vote will be the toughest fight we have had in years.
It is time for the Conservatives to get our fight back.
