By Andy Silvester
Voters are not stupid, and rarely appreciate being treated as such. Nor do they like being blamed for something that isn’t their fault.
As such, the Conservative party’s vocal warnings about the perils of a Labour ‘supermajority’ do not necessarily strike us as a compelling political narrative. That is not to say that opposition isn’t a vital part of a functioning democracy; during the pandemic we were amongst the first to call for Labour to oppose lockdown measures simply so that we could have the proper political argument that the time deserved and did not get. But it is not beholden on voters to engineer parliament so that we have a fine balance across the 650 seats available, but on the parties themselves.
The Conservative party, which called this election, boasts of a clear plan for the future. It is not obvious, to us at least, what that is. Nor has the party adequately turned the page on the chaos of the past few years. And nor is it presenting a compelling intellectual case: yesterday, Rishi Sunak tweeted “We shouldn’t be reliant on foreign food. Buy British,” such an idiotic statement devoid of historical or economic understanding that one wonders if it’s a cry for help from a bright man forced to say stupid things against his will.
If the Tories don’t want Labour to have a ‘supermajority’ they have to fight for every vote with a compelling case. Vast numbers of voters are either unenthusiastic about their ballot or undecided. This election isn’t dead, but it will be if the best we get from the government – the actual government – are ill-thought-through tweets and an appeal not to give them too much of a kicking.
