CSM EDITORIAL

The day after the General Election, Country Squire Magazine produced an editorial which suggested that Theresa May should step down. That her authority was shot. Some Readers of the magazine complained and others agreed. We stick by that assumption however we’d now like to add one proviso.

It is now clear that Labour (let’s call it Momentum, as Corbyn’s party is no longer representative of what we have come to call Labour) see a Tory-DUP coalition as temporary and wish to create as much public unrest as possible until the Government is forced to fold. And they simply do not have the numbers in the House of Commons or in terms of rabble in the street to achieve the downfall of the Government – even exploiting a tragedy like Grenfell, which has been cynically used by Labour to force protesters on the streets of Whitehall, sharing the tarmac with Socialist Worker Party activists, Trotskyites and other nefarious representatives of the far left.

As things stand, the far left are deluding themselves. A minority government could well last a full fixed term five year parliament.

So, May should not step down right now, while the sun is shining and the national mood is febrile. She should wait until after she has achieved an arrangement with the DUP and when the rabble has dispersed. Or they will claim that they dislodged the Prime Minister and become emboldened, when substituting Theresa May is a Tory matter only. Yes, the “Caretaker” Prime Minister must go, just not on account of Corbyn’s opportunistic rentacrowd marshalled by political lightweights like Owen Jones and Paul Mason.

While May is Prime Minister she can be useful to the country, as she is well beyond that stage of winning popularity contests – and in the while she can be very useful to the Conservative Party. She can placate the DUP and throw a hospital pass to the out-of-control BBC by immediately abolishing the license fee. She can push through the boundary changes targeted for 2018. She can ensure that Sir Eric Pickles’ recommendations for presentation of ID at elections and investigations into voter fraud happen. These actions in themselves will do awful damage to Labour and its networks.

May can also get on with Brexit – she is actually in a very strong negotiating position with the EU as she has absolutely nothing to lose (her successor as Prime Minister can blame any Brexit impasse on her after she’s gone). Talk of a “hard” Brexit Tory stalking horse to ensure Brexit means Brexit is premature.

But, in time, May really must go.

The Tory Party cannot risk Theresa May as leader if an election is forced by a no confidence motion or other unforeseen disasters. Nor can the country risk a Corbyn-led Labour Party getting anywhere near the reins of power.

With Grenfell and the shock election result – with the sun beating down on our heads – people have forgotten just how vulnerable Labour are. The eyes of the people are focused on Theresa May and her continuing wobbliness instead. Her handling of Grenfell has been dire to add to an already dreadful couple of months of inadequacy.

May’s awful manifesto, dire campaigning and her experts’ inability to decipher either the Brexit protest vote or the youthful rising behind Corbyn – are unforgivable. However, since the election, Labour have come out with three different Brexit positions, their main spokespeople are contradicting each other, Blairite Labour Party members are secretly fuming at being shut out from the Shadow Cabinet and the underlying weaknesses of Labour are still there to be exploited. What is needed is a strategy – not just tactics to undermine the Labour leadership. Labour is still the same rabble with its Chavista economic policies and innate racist tendencies – a decent strategy and a leader who can articulate Labour’s weaknesses and the Tories will rebound. Labour is riddled with flaws.

Take Paul Flynn – the left wing Corbynite MP – who has summarily dismissed Labour Jewish activists as trolls in the last few days. Yet they held genuinely valid concerns. The Labour party has become institutionally anti-Semitic under Corbyn’s leadership and yet dinosaurs like Flynn ignore the shameful bigotry which is an everyday part of labour politics these days. While the Tory tactic of exposing Corbyn and his top team as an IRA apologist did not seem to work with many voters, it should still surely be a Tory strategy to expose the poisonous, rampant anti-Semitism and the Black-Red alliance inherent within Far Left politics. The Tories’ strategy needs to be better coordinated across social media to win over the youth vote who have little confidence about their futures but who might care to learn about conservatism and sound finances while they read about Venezuela going under whilst practising Corbynomics.

Labour is still there for the taking. This is not arrogance or overconfidence. Labour’s manifesto in the cold light of day is a dartboard. The more the rabble is urged onto the street by Corbyn and McDonnell, the greater the Tories’ chances grow – when, finally, a new leader is chosen and they step into Number 10 unburdened by May’s implosion.