https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-tories-are-denial-unfortunately-so-labour Many articles from the Morning Star today

LABOUR has not felt threatened by the Conservative Party conference in Birmingham this week.

Its just-defeated rival is without a leader and has less than a third as many MPs as the government.

The Tories are in denial: not one speaker addressed the real causes of electoral defeat.

But this is less reassuring than it should be, because Labour too is in denial — about the nature of its victory and the urgency of delivering palpable improvements in living standards and public services.

The explanation for the collapse in Conservative support between 2019 and 2024 is straightforward. It was the sharp decline in quality of life felt by the majority of British people.

The most immediate cause was the cost-of-living crisis. While the inflationary crisis was global, British people were hit unusually hard because it came after more than a decade of falling real-terms wages.

Furthermore an asset-stripped, privatised utilities sector had not bothered to invest in reserves to mitigate shocks: Britain has gas reserves amounting to just 12 days’ usage, compared to 89 days in Germany or 103 in France, for example, leading to weaker resilience in the face of global price fluctuations. To cap it all our government of the rich, for the rich and by the rich did not take serious steps to control runaway prices.

At the same time, years of austerity and privatisation began to hit home across essential services.

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https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/editorial-tories-are-denial-unfortunately-so-labour Many articles from the Morning Star today