Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Tory Theresa is Blue Labour at heart

She has instinctive sympathy with the patriotic, socially conservative  voters who gave Margaret Thatcher 11 years in power

issue 15 October 2016

I never really agreed with the central-thesis of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — that ‘42’ is the answer to life, the universe and everything. I have no great animus against the number — it does its job, filling that yawning gap between 41 and 43. But I had never thought it actually-special until the beginning of this week. That’s when I read that the Conservative Party was 17 points ahead in the latest opinion polls, on 42 per cent. A remarkable figure.

I suppose you can argue that it says more about the current state of the Labour party than it does about Theresa May’s stewardship of the country. My old party is led by a convocation of absolutist imbeciles opposed to not only the UK and what it represents, but to most of the people living in it as well. Its leader supports Palestinian terrorists and the dynastic police state of Cuba and has spoken warmly at IRA commemorations for dead murderers. The shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, called for ‘brave’ IRA members to be honoured by our government — and when forced to disown this odious remark, lied and said it was because he was urging the IRA to lay down their weapons. He wasn’t — he actually opposed the peace-process negotiations which led to the Good Friday Agreement. A major backer of Jeremy Corbyn, Andrew Murray, has confirmed his solidarity with North Korea — great news for young Kim, I-reckon, and perhaps for all of us.

And when these cast-iron idiots shut up, there are always those lard mountains of metropolitan hypocrisy Diane Abbott and Emily Thornberry to remind us all that-McDonnell and Corbyn are not alone in being able to estrange-voters the length and breadth of this country.

The actual popular support for Labour is probably much lower than 26 per cent, given that the pollsters now shove ‘don’t knows’ into whatever party they last voted for, which seems to me highly dubious.

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