Mirror political columnist Paul Routledge dreams up new names for the Conservative Party after their own poll guru suggested Tory had become a dirty word
Tories should stop calling themselves Tories because the term “has become pejorative” urges top Conservative strategist Sir Lynton Crosby.
I’ll say. He has a point. Tory is such a dirty word these days that candidates don’t use it on their leaflets. But the Aussie poll guru they knighted has helped them win elections, so maybe they’ll listen.
If not the Tories, then what? How about Dirty Rotten Scoundrels? The B’Stards, after Rik Mayall’s satire? The Nasties? Theresa May called them the Nasty Party.
Or the Conmen. That would be sexist – although true – so perhaps we should simply call them the Conners. They’ve been conning the British public for more than 300 years.
The Tory party first emerged as a faction in 1689, before morphing into the Conservatives in 1834. Policies remain unchanged, naturally.
Their new leader Kemi Badenoch, the outspoken (that’s one word for it) standard-bearer of the Tory Right, fancies herself as Mrs T Mark 2. She was elected with the votes of 53,800 party members. Coincidentally, that’s the population of Macclesfield. In July, the town’s voters threw out the Tories for the first time since 1918.
Badenoch’s similarly-chosen predecessors Mrs May and Rishi Sunak didn’t have to go through the indignity of winning a general election before becoming Prime Minister. They benefitted from the Tory MPs’ complusive habit of frequent regicide, and portents of the same fate sat behind her when crass Kemi made her debut at Prime Minister’s Questions.
Devoted MPs cheered her every word, but big beasts like Tom Tugendhat, Jeremy Hunt and James Cleverly refuse to serve in her Shadow Cabinet. Mrs Badenough must wait until 2029 before the next election.
And if, as Harold Wilson said, a week is a long time in politics then five years is an eternity On the basis of her glib, self-satisfied performance at PMQs, she doesn’t strike me as a long-haul pilot.
C-minus for campus bosses
When Tony Blair introduced £1,000-a year tuition fees in 1998, universities immediately turned themselves into businesses. With half of school leavers going into higher education, a promised land of big profits and commercial expansion beckoned.
But uni chiefs proved hopeless at the business of doing business, and four out of 10 universities now risk going bust. And, of course, it’s the students who pay the price, with a 3.1% hike in fees to £9,535 a year – probably rising to almost £11,000 by 2029.
Maintenance loans will also rise, making the outlook bleak for students from poorer backgrounds.
“It should never have come to this,” bleats Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson. But as I never fail to point out, this is what happens when big money takes over.
C-minus, pointy-head campus bosses.
