IF ever there was a Government that needed a robust opposition to hold its floundering feet to the fire, it is surely Sir Keir Starmer’s sleazy shower of freebie- loving socialists.
But where are the Tories when you need them?
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In Birmingham — for their party conference, beginning today, where the blues will spend more time talking about their new leader than what this Labour Government is now inflicting upon the country.
The Conservative Party is hardly worthy of being called His Majesty’s Most Loyal Opposition.
As self-obsessed as ever, the Tories are taking so long to decide upon their new leader that the winner will not even be announced until November 2 — three days after Chancellor Rachel Reeves unleashes her Government-defining Budget.
But the Tories are not talking about Labour taxing the British people dry. The Tories are talking about themselves.
Yet there is real opposition to this unloved, unlovely Labour Government, and the resistance is coming from some unlikely quarters.
It is not the Tories who are shouting loudest about Labour robbing ten million pensioners of their fuel allowance — it is the Labour Party members who, at the party conference in Liverpool, voted against this mugging.
And it is not the Tories who are protesting about Labour’s Cloud Cuckoo Land drive to net zero. It is the unions — and especially Gary Smith of the GMB — who have called Labour’s job-shredding, lemming-like charge to net zero by 2030 “bonkers” and “fundamentally dishonest” and “not rooted in the real world”.
And it is not the Tories asking Labour the difficult questions, it is the media, print and broadcasters, with a special mention to Susanna Reid of Good Morning Britain, who gave squirming Starmer a grilling about his love of free stuff worthy of Jeremy Paxman in his Newsnight pomp.
And it is not the Tories who are fighting Labour’s unthought-out policies every inch of the way.
It is the people.
People like Alexis Quinn, a former GB youth swimmer and single mum to an autistic daughter who struggled to fit into a state primary school.
With the help of a scholarship and some financial support from her family, Alexis managed to get her daughter into an independent school, where she is much happier.
But this Government’s plans to impose VAT on private school fees has changed everything.
Alexis simply cannot afford the soaring fees.
But she is fighting back — with many others, including other parents of children with disabilities, military families and representatives of religious faiths.
They plan to challenge Labour’s plans to hammer the private schools, under the European Convention on Human Rights.
They will argue that, since the time of Elizabeth I, education has had a charitable status in this country — exactly the status that Labour is now removing.
They will argue that parents know best for their children, and that parents should have a choice.
The Tories should be making these arguments with them, and for them, and holding Labour to account on every front, from the winter fuel allowance and Keir’s Arsenal tickets to the impossible dream about making our energy carbon neutral by 2030.
The Tories should not still be yakking about leadership. They should be fighting to get back into power.
The Tory conference in Birmingham should be the coronation of the woman or man who is going to clean up the horrors that Labour will inflict on us over the next five years.
Instead, Labour is getting away with what our freebie-junkie Prime Minister piously calls his Government of “service”.
LITTLE LATE, CHRIS
PROFESSOR Sir Chris Whitty, the Chief Medical Officer, told the Covid-19 inquiry this week that health chiefs risked overstating the dangers of the disease.
“I worried at the beginning, and I still worry – did we get the level of concern right?” he said.
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“Were we overpitching it so that the people were incredibly afraid of something where, in fact, their actual risk was low?
“Some would say, if anything, we overdid it at the beginning.”
Now he tells us!
Yes, people did die of Covid. Prime Minister Boris Johnson was almost one of them.
But a generation of youngsters had their development disrupted.
Old folk died alone, their mourners separated at funerals. Businesses were destroyed.
The lockdowns were well-intentioned. But we will be paying for them for the rest of our lives.
NEW poll of iconic fashion items is a nostalgia-inducing compendium that includes such old favourites as Dr Martens boots, bomber jackets, Ray-Bans and Nike trainers.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, No1 is Levi’s 501 jeans.
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These have been going far longer than anything else on the list.
They were patented by Levi Strauss & Co in 1873 – hard-wearing work clobber that was made to last until you got rich or died trying.
But 501s enjoyed their modern revival in the Eighties, when Nick Kamen sent sales and blood pressures soaring as he visited a launderette while Marvin Gaye crooned I Heard It Through The Grapevine.
That’s when the world as we know it really took to the “original shrink-to-fit jeans – now available in stonewash”.
Ironically, we only learned to love Levi’s 501s when Nick took them off.
JET LOO SEX SO DATED
A COUPLE of randy morons were hauled off a crowded easyJet flight by cops after they performed a one-handed sex act in their economy seats.
“Who do you think you are?” Judge Lynne Matthews asked Bradley Smith, 22, and Antonia Sullivan, 20, when sentencing them to community work.
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“There was a child sitting behind you who was able to see what was happening.
“What entitled you to behave in that way in full view of the people on the flight?”
Great question.
The answer – a sense of self-entitlement persuaded Smith and Sullivan to believe they could do whatever they felt like.
And when we get beyond the jokes about adopting the brace position, it is astonishing that a couple think they can get away with some mile-high masturbation with kids inches away.
Sex on an aircraft is nothing new.
But the mile-high club was traditionally convened behind the locked doors of a toilet.
How innocent that seems today!
THE small boats will keep coming even as the private planes will keep leaving.
The slogan of “soak the rich” will always get a standing ovation with the Labour crowd.
But now Chancellor Rachel Reeves is being warned that driving millionaires and billionaires out of the country will leave a funding gap of £1billion for schools and hospitals.
Because the rich will be paying their taxes and spending their loot in some other country.
Labour always say that those with the broadest shoulders should carry the heaviest load. But it is a hard economic fact that they already do.
According to the London School of Economics, the top one per cent of taxpayers contribute 30 per cent of tax revenues.
When a government drives them out, the country suffers.
There is a reason we should all want the likes of Charlie Mullins – founder of Pimlico Plumbers, payer of over £120million in income tax – to stay in the UK.
And not because we need him to fix our leaky stopcock.
JUST SAY CHEESE, PHILIPPINE
YVES Saint Laurent may have gone to the great fashion house in the sky – but the YSL show in Paris was practically a who’s who of the catwalk, big screen and glossy magazines.
Kate Moss wore a black tuxedo jacket.
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Next to her was Zoe Kravitz, all legs and Lenny-like Are You Gonna Go My Way pout.
Gwyneth Paltrow hovered nearby, a black coat casually thrown over a grey suit.
And Rosie Huntington-Whiteley shimmered in a satin shirt dress that inexplicably came with its own suspenders.
Meanwhile, model Bella Hadid wore a suit, shirt and tie, like a civil servant from the days when they did not all work from home.
And yet among the intense competition for attention, all eyes were drawn towards the more mature Philippine Leroy-Beaulieu, 61.
She beamed as she posed for pics in a transparent blue dress.
The Emily In Paris star was living proof that age doesn’t matter.
Unless you are a cheese . . .