We're more tolerant than Rishi might think - we won't give in to his smears

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Image: PA)
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak (Image: PA)

Smearing, scaremongering and demonising are all panicking Conservatives have left after the deceitful Budget bellyflopped with zero poll bounce.

Wised-up voters won’t get fooled again by tax rises dishonestly dressed as cuts, which leaves the distrusted Tories betting the house on culture wars instead.

I predict the strategy will fail for two reasons. The first is the awful cost of living crisis in a Britain currently in recession with woeful key public services, many of them facing fresh Tory slashing, are bread and butter issues that understandably matter to folk feeling the pinch and suffering on record NHS waiting lists.

The second is that most people are better-informed, smarter and more tolerant than Rishi Sunak and the bandits masterminding his – my 20p is still on October or, more likely November – general election campaign give them credit for.

No mob is endangering Britain, as the PM preposterously pretended outside No 10, and I assert that as one of the millions dismayed by the surge in bigotry and hatred endured by our country’s Jewish and Muslim citizens.

Teachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade eiqrqieqidddinvTeachers, civil servants and train drivers walk out in biggest strike in decade
We're more tolerant than Rishi might think - we won't give in to his smears

Sunak anyway hasn’t a moral molehill to stand on when he fails to expel hard-Right fundamentalists such as Suella Braverman, Liz Truss and a 30p Lee Anderson the PM’s desperate to welcome back into Tory ranks.

Tasking slithery Michael Gove, a back-stabbing Rasputin with an unenviable reputation for treating public life as a game of Dungeons and Dragons, to conjure a new definition of extremism is naked political game-playing. Where there are serious issues to be addressed, Gove’s track record confirms he won’t produce solutions.

We’re at the fag end of the worst tax-raising Parliament since the Second World War, tax relative to GDP rising from 33.1% in 2019-20 to 36.5% in 2024-25, then 37.1% in 2028-29 – increases amounting to £3,900 per household.

The over-65s will on average £650 a year worse off by 2027 and you wonder whether two-thirds would again vote for these Tories who keep hammering them financially.

The Chancellor didn’t mention any of those uncomfortable home truths, of course. Jeremy Hunt’s 2% National Insurance reduction is also intended to deflect eyes from higher national debt and spending axes.

But voters weren’t fooled. Which leaves fear the last card to play for Tories terrified of electoral justice. I reckon a sceptical nation won’t buy it. I hope not, anyway.

Kevin Maguire

Politics, Conservative Party, NHS, Michael Gove, Jeremy Hunt

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