Why are the Tories still seen as strong on the economy? | Nesrine Malik

Despite Brexit chaos and the failures of austerity, Theresa May still says Britain's greatest threat is a Corbyn government

It usually takes time for established preconceptions to catch up with reality. For political parties, conventional wisdom about their characteristic strengths and opponents' weaknesses is their bread and butter. It underpins David Cameron's now famously ironic tweet, ahead of the 2015 election, that the British faced a choice between stability with the Conservatives, or chaos with Ed Miliband. The tweet now stands, like Ozymandias's hubristic boast, "Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!", an inscription on a diminishing Conservative party that has spent the last two years cannibalising itself.

And yet, many have still not caught up with the new reality of the Conservatives, because there is another side to the party where perceptions haven't changed. Last week the Wall Street Journal published a report announcing that there was only thing investors in the UK feared more than Brexit: Jeremy Corbyn. "It isn't just Brexit that has investors on edge in the UK," the article warned, "it's the possibility of a new Labour government run by an avowed socialist." Quotes from analysts described a Labour victory as a "lose-lose proposition", "apocalyptic" and "Armageddon".

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