As the Conservatives implode, the red wall suddenly seems in Labour’s grasp | Polly Toynbee
The Brexit balloon is bursting, the cabinet is rife with division - and Keir Starmer and co are increasingly appealing to voters
I fucking hate the Labour party, they're a fucking disgrace ... They've betrayed the working classes, they've betrayed ordinary people." Thus spake Noel Gallagher, the former Oasis guitarist, and out it poured on to Twitter.
Well, he would, wouldn't he? He long ago regretted that embarrassing Cool Britannia moment of euphoria when Tony Blair summoned stars to a 1997 Downing Street party.
Gallagher's purist state of mind is shared by a rump of the left, who feel forever betrayed. In my last column I looked ahead with a glimmer of optimism that, after 12 wilderness years, Labour might be on the road back to power. The usual below-the-line warfare had broken out, with responses such as: I left the Labour party. I will not vote for Starmer, his policies or anyone who supports him." He has introduced a Stalin-like purge of the membership, the grassroots, the activists." They are worse than the Conservatives." A clone of the Tory party." Tory-lite." Cancelled my membership."
Here's a Twitter trope I get all the time: Polly Toynbee and the Guardian helped put the Tories in power (often accompanied by the hashtag #rightwingmedia). Odd this, as the Guardian (and I) backed Jeremy Corbyn's Labour against the Tories in 2017 and 2019. If only we had such influence, the Tories wouldn't have governed twice as long as Labour all my life.
Sometimes I answer back, other times I retell what Labour achieved when last in power: SureStart, tax credits, civil partnerships, more doctors, nurses and beds that helped reduce long hospital waits, increased school and further education funds, an Equality and Human Rights Commission, free entry to museums, a doubling of foreign aid, free nurseries, lifting more than a million pensioners and more than a million children out of absolute poverty - despite the tragedy of Iraq.