Express & Star

Star comment: May has manner for top office

Few could argue that the Conservative’s General Election campaign hasn’t been as smooth as the party or its supporters would have wished for.

Published

Too much was made on it being a Presidential showdown between Theresa May and Jeremy Corbyn.

Critics will argue that Mrs May and her team blundered with their unpopular policy on social care which distracted from the main reason for this snap General Election – Brexit and the forthcoming negotiations with Europe.

The difficulty for the Conservatives has been that no matter how much they wanted to keep Brexit as the single issue and to keep referencing the benefits of Mrs May over Mr Corbyn, they let themselves become bogged down in areas far from those central threads. In doing so they have let Mr Corbyn back into the election and predictions of a Tory landslide now look far off the mark.

If that becomes reality then they only have themselves to blame.

However, one thing has remained crystal clear – Theresa May will make a far superior Prime Minister than Jeremy Corbyn.

Her gracious, statesmanlike manner befits the office of Prime Minister in a way that Mr Corbyn’s ‘old school commie’ persona can never do.

In a similar way to that other suspect avuncular far-left mouthpiece Ken Livingstone, Mr Corbyn in recent days has presented himself as a peace-loving, genial and harmless individual. But like Mr Livingstone, he is nothing of the sort.

Given his previous relationships with terrorist organisations, his anti-monarchist views and his economic policies of the madhouse, he is far from harmless.

Add to that his top team of John McDonnell and Diane Abbott who are even more deluded and extreme in their left-wing views than he is.

How can he be considered as a credible candidate to be Prime Minister when the vast majority of the Parliamentary Labour Party wouldn’t even support him as their leader?

Despite this he has had a resurgence in the opinion polls and Theresa May is right to emphasise that one of only two people in this election will become Prime Minister.

It is a choice between Mrs May and Jeremy Corbyn propped up by a ‘coalition of chaos’ dominated by Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalists.

This newspaper has a proud and long history of being politically independent but even tens of thousands of decent Labour voters in the Black Country can see that scenario really doesn’t bear thinking about.

Make no mistake, this is the most important General Election since 1979. And the most important thing to do is to make sure you vote.