By
’Tunji Ajibade
Don’t even look in Labour Party’s direction at all when you search for a definition of confusion. Didn’t you hear the Tory’s Levelling Up Minister lately? His boss in Number 10 says, don’t say ‘levelling up’, say ‘enhancing communities’ instead. But today the Minister still says on TV that he and the Tories are busy “levelling up”. What more confusion is greater than that within a political party that has already thrown the nation into chaos due to strikes by the unions? So don’t try stick this on us the Labour Party, because it won’t stick.
Nate, from The Cheerers. Even you, won’t you prefer a trendy title if you happen to be a cabinet minister? Ok, which is better? “Leveling up” Minister, or Minister of “Enhancing Communities”? That’s why the Tory Minister sticks with his old title even though Number 10 has said all their MPs should stop using “levelling up” ahead of 2024.
But the matter doesn’t end there. You see, our party leader has been making it known that there’s no leadership in this nation as things stand. Uh? Betty, from The Lookers. You say, there is leadership, and a leader is in Number 10. Well, all I can say is that you need to check what your definition of leadership is. As we speak, and as MP and spokesperson for the Labour Party, I know that only our party can provide leadership. The Tories have their tails between their two legs as of now. And it’s a good thing, from our own perspective of course. In any case there is no other perspective in the UK for the moment, apart from ours.
I can tell you that the Tories have stories, but no perspective worth the voter’s while and so we hold the aces. You are aware that Liz Truss has joined the fray, aren’t you? That’s what I am talking about. It is a sign of where they find themselves. At a time Number 10 should attend to unions’ demands and end the strike, the Tories have Capable Liz too to contend with aside the very giant presence of Boris Johnson. And they have to pay close attention to her every move because that woman is a political force. Don’t forget that that she got Tory MPs’ solid votes, and she campaigned vigorously to become the PM so she is a political force. Recall also that her only challenge as PM was that she was not allowed to execute her plans. Tory MPs panicked and said they wouldn’t back her policies anymore, all because some in the business establishment responded negatively to her plans.
It was to our benefits that time. We taunted Tory MPs based on market reaction to the plan Capable Liz had and they obliged us. Even now we are grilling Number 10 over the bias it shows to PM’s Yorkshire constituency. Did you hear that Yorkshire are receiving £19m from the latest £2.1bn leveling up funding. The Tories are scandalously engaged in ‘levelling up’ favouritism towards Conservative seats and I am telling voters on Violet Sanders on Sunday first thing tomorrow.
Uh? Kim. You say our party did an analysis. Of course we did and we know that London that is under a Labour Mayor gets £151m from the leveling up fund, which is more than both Yorkshire’s allocation and the north-east put together. But, you see, when you talk like that you talk like a journalist. I talk as the politician that I am. You don’t expect me to say a Labour constituency gets more than the PM’s constituency, do you? That will be putting a noose around our neck and asking you to pull it. It’s political suicide as I would be making the Tories look good to the voters. My job is not to help the Tories, it is to unravel them. And I think I am making a good job of it at the moment. That I can tell you without asking you to take to me to lunch all expenses paid by you.
Now think of it. Why won’t their discomfiture be to our glee? We are riding a tall horse in the polls at the moment; our party leader does at a time the Tories are yapping at one another. Some in “red wall” seats say the man in Number 10 doesn’t prioritise levelling up – a Boris Johnson’s key election promise in 2019, so they fear they could lose votes. You see that? They are in power but they give more funds to our London constituency and less to theirs. Number 10 even told their MPs to stop using the phrase “levelling up” ahead of the next election because voters did not know what it meant. It has since denied what we know to be the truth. As for minister for leveling up, he says the Tories are firing the starting gun on transformational projects in every corner of the UK. That’s their headache – whether they fire the starting gun or the finishing gun. In any case, the finishing gun is better at this point, because this administration is in a death throw.
The challenge is that Johnson and Truss seem to want to restore life into the Tories. Uh? Nate. You say why is that Labour’s toothache? It is our backache, even, if you must know. It very much is? If two former PMs who remain visible are stealing primetime TV shows from the incumbent, those of us in the opposition have to be wary. We don’t want any upset as things stand. No upset is permitted. We prefer the Tories to sleepwalk their way into 2024, confused, their house in disarray, that way all roads are open to us.
The Tories should be focused on settling disputes with the unions. But they are distracted, worried as things stand about Johnson and Truss. We don’t want that to happen. You know, as one of my Nigerian friends once said, when you know your fault for what it is, 99 percent of your problem is solved. We don’t want the Tories to think about possibilities for Johnson or Truss.
We don’t want them to wake up from the nice slumber they are having at the moment, falling and picking themselves up as we dictate both at Question Time and on primetime TV shows. We don’t. You are aware, aren’t you, that we push them into sacking their party chairman of late, the same way we lured them to let go of Johnson and Truss that time? It’s how we want to keep them rattling on like a smoky locomotive train all the way into the next general election.
As for the–
