Don’t write off Rishi

Were I sure this was about me alone, I’d hardly bother to mention it: but I may be typical of quite a few others. If so, it’s a touch too early for the Tories to abandon hope.

Last Saturday I wrote in the Times about Sir Keir Starmer, suggesting he lacks the voice or personal command of a prime minister who will need to bully the left into division lobbies and knock warring heads together within his party. Some 900 online readers responded beneath that column. A few agreed with me but the overwhelming majority simply raged against the present government, not a few suggesting that anything would be better than this.

Another observation was made by many: that I personally was ‘reverting to type’. A few readers suggested I had been whipped into line by Rupert Murdoch or his editors. As nobody at my newspaper (including its proprietor) has ever so much as hinted at what I should write, this accusation did not trouble me. But another did. Many suggested that after six years of journalistic fun, bashing the frozen Theresa May, the unspeakable Boris Johnson and the grotesque Liz Truss, I had taken fright at the advancing prospect of a Labour government and was scuttling back beneath the Tory skirts: my tribal instincts were kicking in. Having left the party some years ago (Johnson was the last straw), I was now rooting for it: a Sunak fan boy.

Well, I do rate Sunak, but the ‘reverting to Tory type’ accusation bothered me. I thought hard about it. And basically it’s true. And if it’s true of me, an often critical observer of a political movement in which I broadly still believe, might it also prove true of millions of other former Conservative supporters who spit blood about the mess the Tories have made, but may remain subliminally fearful of a Labour government? Is there a horde of potential Tory voters out there who will find themselves shifting closer to the time?

Optimism about ‘New’ Labour ran deep in 1997.