Voters Already Decided - Told You So

Last month, I concluded that, whatever dirty tricks the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press deployed in order to frighten their readers back into line and support the Tories would not work. The electorate had already made its mind up, and that meant The Blue Team was toast.

And so it came to pass: despite Labour being given a week of torrid press, most of it self-inflicted and thoroughly deserved, the Tories have just experienced a double horror show overnight, with two safe seats lost in by-elections in the constituencies of Wellingborough and Kingswood. If the swing in the former were replicated nationally, only four Tory MPs would remain.

That swing was only 0.7% short of the 1994 record set when Labour took Dudley West. It was well ahead of the swings achieved by Labour last year in Tamworth, and Selby and Ainsty. It may not have helped the Tories that their candidate was the girlfriend of disgraced former MP Peter Bone, whose departure via a recall petition was what sparked the contest.

So what were Rishi Sunak’s excuses, apart from stating the bleeding obvious - that his party is finished and on its way out? As the BBC has reported, “The prime minister says midterm by-elections for incumbent governments ‘are always difficult’ and ‘the circumstances of these by-elections were of course particularly challenging’, after Labour overturned big Tory majorities in both Kingswood and Wellingborough”. So challenging that they lost.

Any more? “But, despite Labour’s swing in Wellingborough being credited as the second largest since the second world war, Sunak says ‘very low turnout’ is to blame and results also show ‘there isn’t a huge amount of enthusiasm for the alternative in Keir Starmer and the Labour party’”. The turnout in both Wellingborough and Kingswood was not low for a by-election.

Why are voters’ minds made up well before the General Election? Simples. The Tories are pursuing fringe votes with needless culture war tactics: sending desperate refugees to Rwanda, picking on Trans people, trying to frighten the electorate against Muslims, pretending only they can sort out all the strikes that are mostly of their own making.

Rail strikes? Could have been sorted long ago, but Sunak and his pals are rail haters and don’t mind damaging the industry - they want it damaged. Doctors taking action? The Tories could have sorted that, too, but they detest the NHS and would like to see it gone, replaced by a far more expensive system of health insurance. And the voters have them sussed.

Worse, scratching the racist itch and kicking followers of The Prophet has backfired spectacularly: Reform UK, formerly the Brexit Party, has scooped up more than 10% of the vote in both Wellingborough and Kingswood. Without any obvious assistance from former Oberscheissenführer Nigel “Thirsty” Farage. The hardcore Brexiteer vote has abandoned the Tories.

The result is that Sunak and his fellow Tories are Dead Politicians Walking. Nothing they do will turn it round. Also, as former Sun editor David Yelland has noted, “Overnight results show that, not since the 1930s, has the British popular press been so out of touch with the British people. The proprietors’ agenda is not the people’s agenda”. The propaganda ain’t making it.

So the Tories are not yet down and out. But you can see it from there.

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