It’s almost as if – and I’m sure this has occurred to many others – the Conservatives over the past 5-6 years deliberately fucked things up, in order to leave their successors with the unpopular task of clearing up their mess. That – if it’s to be done within conventional fiscal rules – will be bound to require either higher taxation or lower public spending, which people won’t like; or else a revolutionary third way, which hasn’t yet been spelled out, and in any case would probably take too long to be effective soon enough.

This is the awkward dilemma that Starmer and Reeves are presently faced with, and accounts for the political difficulties – over the winter fuel allowance for pensioners – that they currently find themselves in. Luckily for them, the government has an enormous cushion of votes in the House of Commons to protect it against any substantial challenge there; which is why I imagine Reeves won’t ‘U-turn’ on this any time soon. Of course I may be wrong – no doubt we’ll find out shortly – but if so it will leave her open to a new charge, of weakness. You can’t win, in this present-day tabloid headline-dominated political world. And in the meantime you have your next electorate becoming alienated from Labour; and all the latters’ fault.

Where however do the Tories go from here? Leaving a pile of dog dirt on the carpet of the Palace of Westminster may be a clever ruse in the short run; but it will hardly do as long-term strategy. In the long term of course the winter fuel allowance may well have been forgotten, which Labour is probably relying on: ‘get the bad news out early’; but then the clownish stupidities of the last Tory governments will probably also have faded from voters’ memories. In which case the Conservatives might have a chance to rebuild; but on what foundations?

There are two main possibilities. The first is to return to the old Tory principles of ‘moderation’: sensible, middle-of the road economically (I’m talking about perceptions here), reliable fiscally, liberal socially, competent, un-ideological, and ‘conservative’ in its literal sense; in other words cuddly, like that lovely Ken Clarke, bless him. (How he’s missed!) The problem with this is that is that Labour might very well have taken hold of that ground from the Tories, under its more cuddly leaders by then. (That’s why it was so wise to get rid of the very un-cuddly Corbyn, however right he was about almost everything.)

The other road will be to veer off to the ideological Right, and become a proto-Fascist party in effect. That’s what the Tories who are most prominent today – that is, shout the loudest – seem to be aiming for. And it’s certainly the route already chosen by Farage, ‘Reform’, and their ‘populist’ following; which is another factor that might push the Tories in that direction – simply out of fear of being displaced by them. Far-Rightism at least presents a clear alternative to Labour, with very easily-defined policies, spelled out recently by those two Tory monsters Priti Patel and Suella Braverman, and clearly appealing to the baser instincts of (some) Britons. And of course it has wider European and Global support, from Trumpism to the AfD, which must give it even more purchase, and confidence. This is the great danger – for us British social liberals – in the near future; which it will require a great effort by reasonable and moderate Tories, if there are any left, to counter.

It will also require enormous skill and judgment on the part of the new Labour government, to succeed in a way that makes this Right-wing ‘turn’ less attractive to the coming generation of voters. Tax or welfare cuts won’t do it, leaving the country in much the same state. In short, it may need a social revolution, of the kind that enabled Labour to succeed so brilliantly after World War II. How this is to be achieved without a war to help it, with powerful press magnates opposed to it, and in the face of the fuck-up the Tories have – deliberately? – bequeathed to Labour, is the great (domestic) issue of our day.

My ideal solution, as a Lefty, would be to undo most of the traces of ‘Thatcherism’, which lie at the bottom of all this. But whether the capitalist tiger Thatcher rode so effectively in the ’eighties, and is still there growling away in the Daily Mail and the Telegraph, will allow Starmer to even start on this must be doubtful. That’s what is at the root of most of our present woes. Mere cunning – more dollops of dog dirt – will not get over it.