Labour Pains

It must get them down, being Labour strategists. They keep seeing Tory charlatans picking up votes with ,meaningless slogans - “take back control.” Bogus offers of 40 new hospitals, or 20,000 police officers, no questions asked. But if you’re giving police officers those powers, there’s a whole lot of questions you should be asking.

So it’s not amazing that the Labour boys want to get their own, devising posters branding Sunak as a soft liberal who lets sex offenders and gun owners roam free, whereas Labour promises to lock ‘em up. And maybe that Trump echo wasn’t an accident? And when the Tories complain, there’s some hard young lad ready to quip “they don’t like it up ‘em.”

But we’re talking playground spat here, not actual politics. It’s a tough, uphill grind, but it’s still Labour’s job to point out that this stuff isn’t easy, that quick fixes on a poster will cost you if they become pledges that you have to carry out. And if that isn’t true, if you’re so desperate that anything goes, why not do it properly and promise to keep Suella Braverman in post? We know there are voters out there who’d welcome that, but are those the votes you really want to win?