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TONY PARSONS
General election is not a done deal…but disillusioned Tory voters staying home is straw that PM & the party must grasp
The Tory party must give voters a reason to care enough to vote for them
LABOUR are now a general election juggernaut and pointing out that some of the wheels are a bit wonky is not going to stop them.
Labour’s problems only seem to help their cause.
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Dumping their grand green promises? For most of the British people, stopping the insane, uncosted rush to net zero is a massive vote winner.
Those ugly anti-Semitism rows? They simply give Sir Keir Starmer the opportunity to prove he is not Jeremy Corbyn, that self-confessed friend of Hamas.
As for people — like me — sneering at Starmer for his endless U-turning, flip-flopping hypocrisy, so what?
Does anyone think a politician breaking their promises is anything remotely new? It’s hardly the first time.
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After surrendering two huge majorities in formerly Brexit- believing constituencies, only one senior Tory had the bottle to face the cameras the morning after — calm, courageous Jacob Rees-Mogg, who insisted the two defeats were not quite as catastrophic as he had anticipated.
Seeing Rees-Mogg bravely face the cameras made me think some hope remains for the Conservatives.
Jacob spoke of “the Tory family” — which is currently as dysfunctional as the Royal Family.
Voters for Reform UK are Starmer’s greatest allies, helping to elect a Labour government they will not enjoy one bit.
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Yes, you can understand the frustration of those who see a Tory Government presiding over historically high taxes and immigration figures that are higher than they ever were when we were in the EU.
But will Labour make it better?
By-election blow as Labour wins victories in two Tory strongholds and Keir Starmer hails ‘fantastic result’
The Tories have a mountain to climb and they remain comatose in base camp.
And if this was a bad week for Keir Starmer, I would hate to see what a good week looks like.
And credit where it is due — Labour’s soundbite “Rishi’s recession” has a catchy ring. It is one of those slogans — “Take Back Control” was the classic — that can alter the course of our country.
It is a cliché to state that Starmer does not excite the same kind of optimism that Tony Blair inspired just before he buried John Major.
But even that indifference is working in Starmer’s favour.
Voters adored Boris Johnson. Jeremy Corbyn inspired fanatical devotion.
And both Bojo and Jezza disappointed their disciples.
Keir Starmer is never going to inspire great expectations.
But he doesn’t need to. It is worth noting one killer statistic.
In the Wellingborough and Kingswood by-elections, most eligible voters did not even go to the polling booth.
In Wellingborough, the turn-out was a pathetic 38.1 per cent. In Kingswood, only 37.1 per cent of eligible voters could be bothered to place their X in the box.
Disillusioned voters staying home is the straw that Sunak and the Tories must grasp.
The general election is still not a done deal — not quite.
But all those disenchanted Tory voters who stayed home or defected to Reform or Labour are all singing the same old Luther Vandross song to Rishi Sunak and the Conservatives.
Give me the reason to want you back.
GOOD news for men with a thinning thatch on top. Women love a slaphead.
“Shiny bald heads are having their moment,” insists a spokesman for dating website Illicit Encounters, which polled 2,000 women.
That explains why Amazon boss Jeff Bezos – net worth £152billion – is so often seen with a beautiful woman on his arm.
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THE best thing on TV right now is Griselda, starring Sofia Vergara as Griselda Blanco, the drug lord known as the Cocaine Godmother, and reportedly the only person Pablo Escobar was ever terrified of.
Griselda is a short, six-part Netflix mini-series – and so brief and brilliant that you are left craving more.
It’s the show for anyone who has enjoyed Al Pacino in Scarface more times than they can count.
I'LL MISS CARING STEVE'S MAGIC
WHEN Steve Wright died suddenly at the age of 69 it was the lead item on the BBC’s evening news.
Steve would have smiled at that. And he would have been amazed and deeply touched at the outpouring of grief.
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After being sacked by Helen Thomas, chief of Radio 2, Steve probably believed his life – and career – were on the skids. But the reaction to his death proved he remained as popular as ever. Millions feel they have lost a family friend.
I appeared on Steve’s afternoon radio show many times and always felt better after seeing him.
He lifted your spirits, whether you were in the studio with him or listening on the radio.
Steve lived to make you forget your cares for a while. And he did.
When other BBC DJs were booted out for the crime of getting older, some reacted with bitterness to the Beeb’s strategy of replacing whiplash-smart mature talent for pea-brained youthful mediocrity. But Steve had a more gentle, forgiving nature.
“Sometimes people want you, sometimes they don’t,” he sighed after he was dumped by Thomas in September 2022.
“I understand that, I really understand that.”
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He meant it. Steve’s many friends have reacted with fury to Thomas’s elaborate homage to Steve when it is only a year and a bit since she callously showed him the exit door.
Steve was “second to none”, gushed Helen. But Steve would have graciously accepted Thomas’s belated, lavish praise, and told his mates to not give the woman a hard time. Every job ends.
Sometimes – as with Steve Wright and those madcap afternoons that will never come again – they end far, far too soon.
Even the job of Radio 2 chief Thomas will end one day. And I can’t help but wonder: Who will mourn you losing your job, Helen?
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SHARON STONE – dazzling like Basic Instinct was only yesterday in the latest issue of InStyle mag – says that when she goes out to dinner, she always pays.
Is there not one red-blooded man – or woman – in the US who wants to buy dinner for Sharon?
America is more messed up than we thought.
A SIDE-EFFECT of the shoplifting epidemic is that assaults on store staff have surged by 50 per cent.
Retailers says violence or aggression now happens every minute of every day.
The Co-op alone recorded more than 335,000 criminal acts in its stores in 2023 – almost 1,000 every day.
Attacks with bottles and needles are now commonplace.
The police are useless, the courts are soft and the politicians don’t care.
Staff are quitting in droves. Shops are already starting to close.
Shoplifting will ultimately do more harm to the high street than the pandemic or online shopping ever did.
ZENDAYA'S BOT STUFF
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ZENDAYA rocked up on the red carpet for Dune: Part Two looking like C-3PO’s hot sister.
R2-D2 must be blowing a gasket.
PUTIN'S ALL GO FOR SAD OLD JOE
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JOE BIDEN loyalists were hoping for an endorsement from Taylor Swift for their doddery old POTUS as he gears up to combat Donald Trump.
Instead, they had to settle for an endorsement from Vladimir Putin.
Speaking to Russian TV on Wednesday night, Mad Vlad shrugged off concerns about Biden’s mental competence after recent revelations that Joe no longer knows his a**e from the President of Egypt.
“I did not see anything of this sort,” Putin said of his meeting with Biden in Geneva in 2021.
“Yes, he kept looking at his papers but I kept doing the same.” Putin judged that, compared to Donald Trump, Biden was, “a more experienced person – he is predictable, he is a politician of the old formation”.
If Biden ever pressed the nuclear button, it would be because he was trying to call room service
Is Putin bluffing? Would Russia really prefer President Trump in the White House?
Biden has called Putin a “killer” – even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine – while Trump called Putin “a genius” – even after Russia’s invasion.
But Putin is probably playing it straight. For all his fast-failing faculties, Biden IS more of a conventional, traditional politician than the unstable Donald.
This week Trump recklessly boasted that he would encourage Russia to attack any Nato country that did not contribute enough to the alliance – great news for every mad, murdering dictator on the planet.
Putin is right – Trump is dangerously unpredictable.
Trump is the presidential candidate more likely to press the nuclear button on purpose.
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While if Biden ever pressed the nuclear button, it would be because he was trying to call room service.
But Biden is not the only presidential candidate whose mind is mush.
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