How to win my vote

The repeated injunction that we should all ‘move on’ from worrying our silly heads about partygate is as otiose as it is arrogant. It is also, of course, a case of wishful thinking at its most extreme. And yet I hear it every day, on TalkRadio, on GB News, from pro-Conservative friends on Facebook and so on. Listen, you Tories, you need a new strategy, because ‘it’s time to move on’ hasn’t worked. Indeed, a good million or two voters have moved on and according to the polls will not be voting Conservative at the next election, if ever again.

Nor is it any use whining about how we have all become obsessed about the Prime Minister eating a piece of cake when there’s a war going on and a cost-of-living crisis. It is not about a piece of cake. It is about the complacency, arrogance and entitlement of an administration which broke its own stupid rules on 16 occasions and then proceeded to lie about it all to MPs and to the House of Commons. In other words, it is an important issue and tells you something about the tenor of our government. It is no use trying to tell voters that it is all a storm in a smashed prosecco flute, because they are not wearing it.

Nor is it any use trying to tell them, hey, look at Starmer – he did exactly the same thing! No, he didn’t. He had a drink and a curry with unspeakably awful party comrades in some frowsy hall in County Durham. He probably shouldn’t have done so. He was also stupid to insist that the Prime Minister should resign if he were investigated by the police because now, by his own lights, Starmer should resign because the Durham plod are investigating him.