The Tories are in meltdown - hope we can get our acts together in Hexham Constituency

No blogging for a while! It's been a full time job to keep up with what's going on. Even the Conservative Party are now waking up to the reality of what they have become under Boris Johnson's leadership. A steady drip of Tory MPs are writing letters of "no-confidence" in the Prime Minister. To add insult to many injuries, he sank to a new low by trying to smear Keir Starmer with the pathetic "Jimmy Saville" reference. Jimmy Saville was of course a massive supporter of the Conservative Party, but that is neither here nor there. This seems to have led directly to mass resignations of the PMs staff which is laughably being characterised as the "clear out" that Johnson has promised. What a shambles. All at a time when the cost of living crisis is in full swing, post-Brexit realities are hitting and there is a massive crisis in Ukraine. This is all without mentioning COVID, worsening inequality, empty promises of "levelling up", food bank use increasing, deterioration in physical and mental health, lack of investment in education etc etc.

To those of us who would never consider voting Tory, none of this is a big surprise. It's the inevitable consequence of a hard Right political agenda, delivered by a faction of the Tory party which has little concern for the impact on the population.

What's do be done?

Well, we can all sit back and keep our fingers crossed for the next election and hope that the Tories will have made such a mess of things, there will be a Labour landslide. 

Alternatively, maybe it's time to get involved in trying to influence the future. In Hexham constituency the only realistic way of ending up with a non-Tory MP after the next election, is for the opposition to be much more united. All would have to come behind the candidate with the best chance of beating the sitting Tory MP. In Hexham constituency, realistically, that's Labour. So the challenge for Hexham Labour Party is to carve out a strategy that delivers a chance of a Labour MP.

What would that strategy look like? Recruiting more people into the Labour Party and campaigning on the issues that matter most to the people of Hexham Constituency? Moving away from a narrow political agenda?

Reaching out to other opposition political parties and their supporters? Urging them to use their influence to encourage tactical voting in favour of Labour.? This should be linked with a reciprocal approach in constituencies where the Greens or Lib Dems are best placed to beat the Tories?

I had my hair cut in Prudhoe today. The lovely woman who cut my hair said "All the politicians are the same - no matter who gets in, my life stays the same". That's the challenge for the Labour Party - how to convince the electorate that this isn't true. It's not enough to convince the already converted.

 

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