Kemi Badenoch must invoke the spirit of Margaret Thatcher during the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week to counter the socialist agenda outlined by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, according to a columnist for the Daily Express.
Giles Sheldrick argues that Labour's lurch to the left has emboldened socialists and that the Tory leader offers hope in the face of what he describes as a socialist onslaught. He contends that the Prime Minister, who he notes is unelected, vowed to dismantle the political and economic direction of the past four decades in a tax and spend gamble.
Burnham's vision questioned
Sheldrick criticises the Prime Minister's conference speech, saying sycophants of the Left sat transfixed at Burnham's vision without questioning how it will be paid for. He claims the country is broke, saddled with eye-watering debt and facing a tax burden at its highest since World War Two.
While Burnham has distanced himself from Thatcher, blaming her for damage he claims she caused, Sheldrick says Badenoch should align herself with the Iron Lady. He argues that Labour wants to fleece workers to fund shirkers, while Badenoch offers hope to those who have strived and saved.
Tax and welfare plans
Sheldrick notes that Badenoch admits cutting inheritance tax would be "morally right" and argues the fruits of a family's hard work should not be penalised. He points to Tory plans to slash the welfare bill, which he says hangs as a £350 billion a year millstone, and a commitment to keeping the State Pension Triple Lock, benefiting the 20% of the electorate of pensionable age.
Badenoch is quoted as saying: "The problems of today may have some echoes with 50 years ago, but they are quite different, and they are a lot worse. In the Seventies, they were mostly focused on the economy. Now, it isn't just the economy. It's the whole country. Just the way we do everything, from courts to policing to integration to immigration, we've just over-complicated so much stuff, and it's going the wrong way. Government does not create growth. It is business that creates growth. Government needs to create the conditions for growth, and sometimes needs to get out of the way."
Back-to-basics approach
Sheldrick says Badenoch needs to explain what a back-to-basics approach means, including protecting borders, ending the cross-Channel migrant crisis, stopping "woke nonsense," protecting single-sex spaces, slashing the size of the state and the benefits bill, cutting taxes, supporting struggling businesses, lowering energy costs and overseas dependence on supply, ending Civil Service meddling, and strengthening law and order.
He argues this places daylight between Labour, which promises the Earth in soft-focus vision, and the Tories. Burnham wants more central control and state ownership in a chilling reminiscence of the 1970s, he adds. Sheldrick concludes that Badenoch is untouched by scandal and has a unique chance to cement her standing as a credible alternative, potentially changing the path Britain is blindly walking.
