This Tory long goodbye is toxic for the country – and making Labour’s job ever harder | Jonathan Freedland

The greater the wait until the election, the more reassurance Labour must provide. And that weakens its future mandate

We're at the fag-end of this government, but it's going to burn for a while longer yet. Those who hoped it might finally be stubbed out of its misery on 2 May were set straight by Rishi Sunak on Thursday, when he killed off speculation that he might add to the clutch of local elections scheduled for that day by calling a general one. The long wait for this government to be flattened under the voters' collective shoe goes on.

We've lived through fag-end administrations before, but this one is more toxic. Back in the dog days of the John Major era, it was bonking backbenchers and brown-envelope cash for questions that pointed to the political terminus. This time, the rot is graver.

Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist

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