Labour might have won the general election, but the Conservatives won conference season by a landslide.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer entered Labour Conference mired in a hypocritical gift-grabbing controversy. During Conference, he perpetuated his unpopularity by picking on poor pensioners. And post-Conference, Starmer repaid £6,000 worth of gifts. This means three things: guilty, guilty, and guilty. This is the equivalent of a criminal turning themselves into the police. Labour’s landslide ‘party’ was so doom and gloom, it looked more like a funeral.
What a stark contrast to the buzzing optimism at Conservative Conference in Birmingham. It turned out to be such a hot ticket, I’m surprised Keir Starmer didn’t wangle a free pass from a Labour donor. Because for almost an entire week, Birmingham was home to thousands of very happy Tories.
Perhaps you’re confused. The Conservatives just suffered their worst ever electoral defeat. How could anybody on the blue team possibly be happy about that?
Let’s face it. Nobody was surprised when the Conservatives haemorrhaged hundreds of seats in July. Everybody had been expecting it for almost two years. And so the relief – the realisation that, finally, the party can turn the page and start a fresh – was palatable at this Conference. I know this because I was there.
Unlike Keir Starmer’s promise for change, which turned out to be change for the worse, Conservative Conference exemplified changing for the better.
For the first time, members’ debates led the way – including a speech from yours truly – and people listened. MPs took a step back, letting grassroots members lead the charge for new, fresh, innovative ideas from the bottom up. At fringe events, panellists were at one with the member-led audience. You could hear the cogs churning away as people in the room calculated how to work together to gear up the most successful political machine in history for victory once again.
This wasn’t business as usual. This wasn’t industry associations demanding answers from helpless ministers and councillors. It was party members working together to rebuild the party they love.
And of course, the entire conference was galvanised by the four leadership candidates pitching new ideas to reform internal party organisation, win back voters and, ultimately, win the 2029 General Election. Don’t laugh. You’ve seen the UK descend into Starmergeddon in just twelve weeks. I refuse to believe anybody can be happy with this Labour government so far.
So when lefty Guardian columnist and former Social Democratic Party candidate Polly Toynbee called this a ‘weird Tory festival of mass delusion’, I couldn’t help but call out this clueless crassness for what it is. Panic.
Labour are quaking in their boots. Like a rabbit in the headlights, they have frozen in government. They have realised it’s not so easy to fix every problem under the sun without spending a fortune – so how convenient that a £22 billion black hole has magically been discovered as a scapegoat for Labour’s inevitably forthcoming failed promises. And all the while, the unlimited freedom and joy of Conservative Conference is living rent-free in their heads.
It's not the Tories who are deluded – it’s Labour.
If Keir Starmer thinks he can get away with pinching lifesaving payments to help pensioners through cold winters and scrapping the single-person council tax discount to help vulnerable citizens living alone, he’s mistaken. The British people will not tolerate it. His own party won’t even support him, as we saw when boos and jeers erupted from Labour Conference in protest.
And don’t forget that Starmer is picking the pockets of our poor and our pensioners to stuff cash in the mouths of Labour’s union paymasters. Of this elusive £22 billion black hole, £9 billion was due to Starmer giving junior doctors a 22% pay rise. Don’t even try to pull the wool over our eyes.
Chaos is infecting the holy soil of the United Kingdom worse than ever under Starmer’s leadership. And let it not be forgotten that, up in his ivory tower, Starmer is living on a bloated budget of undeclared lavish gifts. Starmer has created his own self-destructive political football (sorry) – firing an arsenal (sorry again) of shots at his own party’s success. As for Victoria Starmer’s clothes? Well, surely the son of a toolmaker can put his own wardrobe together (huge credit to Stuart Andrew and his speechwriters).
The party and the public are already losing faith in Keir Starmer. Polls are showing that Labour will lose in 2029. So while Labour are still banging the drum of the past, the Conservatives are forming a vision for the future. Whoever is selected to lead the party, new ideas will come – and victory will follow. Lessons have been learnt, apologies have been issued, and the burning desire to put things right has been ignited once more.
So, to Polly Toynbee and all the lefty doubters. Yes, Conservatives were very happy at Conference – and for good reason. Because while Labour are dying in a ditch of their own making, the Conservatives have been reborn. The most successful political party in the world is on the rise again. Soon, the Tories will be dancing on Labour’s grave.
Image: The Conservative Party/Flickr
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