David Hoare

My left-leaning, champagne-socialist friends were so excited at the prospect of a Labour government last year. “Of course we want you to win Kemi” they told me, “but after 14 years, it’s time for change”. Well they got that change and they are absolutely aghast at what's happening to the country. It’s change for the worse. They thought they would be getting Tony Blair’s Labour or Gordon Brown’s Labour, instead they got Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour with Keir Starmer at the helm. Starmer entered Downing Street with no plan, and he has been found out in the most brutal way possible. As he openly admitted last weekend, he is too easily distracted and doesn’t read what his advisers put in front of him. Labour have taken a wrecking ball to the British economy. They have waged war on business and overseen a rise in unemployment almost every single month that they’ve been in office. Worryingly, the farcical events of the past week have blown an even bigger hole in the public finances. Further tax rises in the autumn now look inevitable. Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves have shown themselves to be serially incompetent and it’s working families who are set to pay the price. The laundry list of this government's failures makes for grim reading. Snatching away winter fuel payments from vulnerable pensioners, only to u-turn when the political pressure got too much for them. Taxes raised to their highest levels since WWII. Surrendering British territory in the Chagos Islands – and paying £30 billion for the privilege. One of Keir Starmer's first acts was to scrap the Rwanda deterrent, instantly removing the most effective means of dissuading illegal migrants from getting into small boats. Instead, Starmer promised to 'smash the gangs' and so far all he's done is smash records for new arrivals. We've already passed 20,000 illegal Channel crossings in 2025, making this the worst year ever, and there are now more migrants being housed in asylum hotels on the taxpayers' expense than there were when Labour took office. This has been a year defined by constant lies and u-turns. The only thing consistent about Keir Starmer is his inconsistency. He doesn’t listen and he doesn’t learn. From grooming gangs to winter fuel, he arrogantly dismisses the principled and reasoned case we are making, only to later buckle to the spendthrifts in his party, who think that the workers and grafters can be squeezed forever to pay for benefits. Many Labour MPs have never worked in a private business let alone run one. They just don't get it. His inability to get even modest reductions in spending increases (not a cut as most assumed) to the welfare bill shocked even me. I told Starmer that he would have our support if he brought forward serious welfare reforms that actually got costs down and got people into work, but instead he capitulated to his backbenchers. It has only taken a year, but this is a Prime Minister already in a doom loop. Keir Starmer is in office but not in power. Left-wing Labour MPs can now smell blood, and the government’s authority has all but drained away. Ultimately, Starmer is a lawyer not a leader. He is a mediocre middle-manager seemingly intent on delivering his grim vision of managed decline for Britain. By contrast, I am an optimist. I believe in Britain’s potential. I want a complete renewal of our country so that it’s fit for the 2030s. We’re not going to waste our time in opposition bending the knee as Starmer did, we’re going to have a proper plan in place so we’re ready for government. I’m doing all of this because it is now abundantly clear that only the Conservative Party knows what needs to be done to deliver a strong economy and a more robust society. We’re on the side of the makers - the business owners, the people running our public services - not the takers, such as the illegal migrants turning up on our shores and demanding handouts. By contrast, Labour and Reform are like two bald men fighting over a comb – both scrabbling around to borrow and spend even more and pump up our bloated welfare state. One party is too incompetent to get a grip, and the other is a one-man band telling people what they want to hear, without any details of how they will deliver. I am the only party leader prepared to tell people the truth – that our country needs to live within its means and we need to get spending under control so we don’t burden our children with our debts, which is inherently unfair. It might only have been a year, but Labour have already done enormous harm to our country. We’ve got another four years of this. Britain deserves better.