Voters must remember how good they’ve had it under the Conservatives

At half-time, we need a wake-up call in the interests of our families and the country.

Although people are frustrated, it is important to understand the full impact and costs of Covid and Putin’s war in Ukraine on the economy and public finances – Covid alone cost the taxpayer £400 billion.

The war’s impact on energy costs and inflation, interest rates and the cost of living have undermined confidence in the Government. Realistically, this problem is global and no fault of the Government. This has inevitable economic consequences for short-term tax policy, which is now on a new path to significant tax reductions.

Germany is mired in stagnation and deindustrialisation, as are other EU countries, with rising unemployment, static wages and severe austerity. Out of the EU, our economy is comparatively good. The economy under the Conservatives is working. Inflation is down to 2.3 per cent, we are the fourth biggest exporter globally, the City of London could soon overtake New York, and we have the joint fastest growth rate in the G7. The IMF reports that the UK will soon outgrow Germany and France.

Britain is not “broken”. Brexit is a success, not a failure, regaining our sovereignty, freedom and democracy in peacetime, as we did in Normandy during the war. The EU, with proportional representation, is not working.

Remainers said trade would plummet if we left the EU, but the opposite is true. Post-Brexit trade deals have helped to bring in billions of pounds in new investment for the UK. ONS data show that since 2016, the nominal value of UK exports to the rest of the world has increased by 50 per cent, with the services sector rising by 70 per cent. There is still more to do through further deregulation, and only the Conservatives can be trusted to deliver.

Furthermore, on immigration, Europe seems to be in a far worse situation. It is a global issue, and the problem turns on needing to renegotiate international treaties. We must override the ECHR, which, with clear legislation, the Supreme Court will surely support. The EU is tearing its hair out over the new Migration and Asylum Pact, with quotas and fines for non-compliance to the fury of the member states who oppose it and seemingly want migration excluded from EU policy-making. The bloc is in disarray, with Emmanuel Macron forced into a snap election.

Never forget the Government here appears to be continuously undermined by a fifth column of ideological remainers in the BBC and other broadcasters, egged on by the woke-ridden EU obsessives in the civil service and Government Legal Service, who have battered government ministers with their international and human rights laws and failure to rewrite treaties.

I often challenged Remainers to answer a simple question: “Will you ask your constituents the following – would you want to rejoin the EU, where laws are made not by elected MPs in Parliament, but by the council of ministers, by majority vote of member states behind closed doors, without a transcript?” Not one ever dared to reply.

The Reform party cannot and will not produce solutions, but simply rants about punishing the Tories, which will only betray Brexit.

Reform UK won’t have a parliamentary majority, as at least 326 MPs are needed for this, and not a single word of legislation can be passed without this. Every vote for Reform undermines Brexit and boosts Keir Starmer, who has no plausible plan.

Starmer’s Brexit record shows that he is not to be trusted. He called the democratic referendum result in 2016 “catastrophic”, and later called for a second referendum.

Labour always fails – don’t chance it. Remember that Labour made such a mess economically after the Second Word War that the voters brought back Churchill within six years. In the 1980s, Thatcher created a competent and realistic economy. Blair and Brown blew it.

Labour governments leave office having bust the country’s finances – as Liam Byrne said: “I’m afraid there is no money.” Boris Johnson prevailed in 2019 before Covid and Ukraine. A Labour landslide, as always, will mean increased taxation, which Starmer doesn’t deny. Labour cannot be trusted – and voting for Reform means getting Labour.

On social issues, for example, our Online Safety Act 2023, unlike the EU, imposes imprisonment for up to two years on big tech bosses putting young people at risk of self-harm and suicide from online content.

The Conservative Party in government passed the Referendum Act in Parliament and regained our sovereignty through Brexit withdrawal legislation (with Section 38), not Nigel Farage’s ranting from the sidelines.

His misleading claims that Ukip, the Brexit Party and Reform delivered Brexit are total rubbish. In the 2019 European parliament elections, the Brexit Party merely obtained 30.5 per cent of the vote on a derisory 37 per cent turnout, whereas in the 2019 general election, the Conservatives won a majority of 80 with a 67 per cent turnout.

Frustration is no reason to vote for self-annihilation with Labour. Many people are yet rightly uncertain. There is too much at stake to vote for Reform or Labour out of frustration and then face a Labour catastrophe.

Sir Bill Cash was a Conservative MP from 1984 to 2024