Convenience Big Store: Voters won’t buy Labour’s “nasty” Tories line

5 May, 2021

In the headlines

Labour's own polling points to a huge by-election defeat in Hartlepool tomorrow, says The Guardian, with as few as 40% of recent supporters planning to vote for them. The party's Achilles heel "is the 'meh' voters (who stay at home) as much as the 'yeah' voters (who back the Tories)", says Paul Waugh in HuffPost. The trial of two army veterans accused of murdering an IRA commander has collapsed after key evidence was ruled inadmissible. France has threatened to cut off Jersey's electricity over a post-Brexit fishing row. "I'm sorry," said Annick Girardin, the French maritime minister, but "we will do so if we have to."

Comment of the day

Labour leader Keir Starmer on the campaign trail in Hartlepool. Getty Images

Voters won't buy Labour's "nasty" Tories line

It's 16 years since Labour last won a general election, says Rafael Behr in The Guardian. I can't see that changing any time soon. It needs to reassure traditional voters in heartlands such as Hartlepool that the party hasn't "been captured by snooty metropolitans, far-left fanatics or both". But a bigger own goal is its endless attack on the "same old Tories". This is a different Tory brand to the "nasty party" David Cameron worked so hard to detox. Yet when Conservatives show compassion, the automatic response from the left is to "dismiss it as a cynical feint". The left is "conditioned to doubt that any decent human being could be a Tory".

Britain doesn't have the same old politics or voters – but Labour hasn't adapted and the Tories have. Sleaze allegations have their place, but they won't beat the promise of restored local and national esteem that many former Labour voters heard two years ago in Boris Johnson's invitation to "get Brexit done". And you won't endear yourself to voters by chastising them for giving the "wrong answer" on the ballot paper. "One thing no leader has attempted is a candid, humble explanation for why the party keeps losing". If Labour wants to win, it must stop blaming right-wing tabloid hysteria or the "Boris effect" for hoodwinking the electorate. "A strategy based on telling voters to look again, look harder, because they missed the point last time is doomed".

Read the full article here.

Hungary has chosen China over the EU

"Victor Orban's Hungary is becoming China's Trojan horse in Europe," says Pierre Haski in L'Obs. But unlike the ancient Greeks, today's Chinese invaders don't bother hiding. Budapest has agreed to become home to the European campus of Shanghai's prestigious Fudan University. CSCEC, a company blacklisted by the US for espionage and corruption, is bringing in its own people and materials from China until 2024 to get the job done. The Chinese Communist Party is even stumping up €1.5bn to cover construction – enough to cover Hungary's annual higher-education budget.

This follows Orban's decision two years ago to kick out George Soros's Central European University for being pro-immigration. Orban loathes the liberal Soros, his "bête noire". He also loathes Brussels, albeit not quite enough to say no to EU subsidies, and will seize any opportunity to wind up the "global elite". Bluntly, by opening the door to China's model of "ideological control", he has picked Beijing over Brussels and Washington. While the EU is frostily stonewalling China's influence – and Russia's – Orban has welcomed their vaccines, criticised the EU's pro-Uighur line and vetoed the bloc's motion to condemn the crackdown in Hong Kong. Germany indulges Orban's troublemaking on the basis that Hungary is "better inside than outside" the EU. But the Sino-Hungarian alliance makes the paradox clear: Hungary is both in and out. That's a worrying precedent – and the "Hungarian pitfall" is the EU's greatest existential threat.

Read the full article here.

Inside politics

I can't understand all this Downing Street makeover fuss, says Anne-Elisabeth Moutet in UnHerd. Carrie Symonds's rumoured £88,000 refurb pales in comparison to Brigitte Macron's. The French president's wife spent more than £500,000 redoing the Elysée Palace at the height of the "gilets jaunes" crisis. When asked why she spent so much money, she "blithely" explained that it was just a spot of "dépoussiérage" – dusting off the cobwebs.

Gone viral

For years Billie Eilish disguised her body in baggy clothes – see her Vogue cover from March 2020. Now the singer is back on the front of the magazine in a corset. "I've literally never done anything in this realm at all," she says, "you know, besides when I'm alone and shit." The rebrand has gone down well: Eilish posted a picture from the photoshoot on Instagram and it has 21 million likes. That makes it the fourth most liked image in history.

Zeitgeist

Edinburgh University has drawn up a list of "microinsults" that lecturers are being told to avoid. Phrases such as "All women hate their periods", "I wanted to be a boy when I was a child" and "All people think about being the opposite gender sometimes" are said to "negate or nullify the thoughts, feelings or lived reality of trans and non-binary people".

Sport

A fan of the Philadelphia Phillies baseball team astonished onlookers at Sunday's game against the New York Mets by plucking a shot from the air one-handed. The ball was travelling at 97mph when the man, holding an ice cream served in a miniature baseball cap, raised his free hand to catch it. "Get that fan a contract," said one of the commentators.

Noted

As the news broke about Bill and Melinda Gates parting ways, journalist Edwin Dorsey posted a natty spreadsheet on Twitter showing that the world's 10 richest men have been divorced 13 times in total. Leading the way was Larry Ellison (eighth richest) with four divorces, followed by Elon Musk (third richest) with three. Although being incredibly rich isn't a guarantee that your marriage will end – Mark Zuckerberg's is still going strong – one commenter on the tweet asked: "How long before a divorce lawyer makes it into the top 10?"