Theresa May has already outlined her strategy to destroy Labour at the next general election
The Conservative leader outlined the following policy priorities:
- Put workers' representatives on company boards, because current board directors tend to be "drawn from the same narrow social and professional circles as the executive team and - as we have seen time and time again - the scrutiny they provide is just not good enough."
- Add consumer representatives to boards as well.
- Make shareholder votes on corporate pay not just advisory but binding, and require a vote on executive compensation every year.
- Put the government "at the service of working people."
Her words - delivered earlier to the Sun on Sunday - sound like they could have come from a Labour party leader, even Jeremy Corbyn:
"I want to make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for everyone, regardless of who they are and where they're from. ...
"Right now, if you're born poor, you will die on average nine years earlier than others. If you're black, you're treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white.* If you're a white, working-class boy, you're less likely than anybody else to go to university. If you're at a state school, you're less likely to reach the top professions than if you're educated privately. If you're a woman, you still earn less than a man. If you suffer from mental health problems, there's too often not enough help to hand. If you're young, you'll find it harder than ever before to own your own home.
"But, as I have said before, fighting these injustices is not enough. If you're from a working-class family, life is just much harder than many people in politics realise."
She's done this before.
May made her reputation when she addressed the Police Federation two years ago and told its members that they had a "contempt for the public," that 4 in 10 black people didn't trust the police, and that she would break the closed-shop union that has monopoly representation of the force. The police refused to clap her - an unheard of act for a Conservative home secretary, for whom this would normally be friendly turf.
She went back this year and called the federation's accounts a "slush fund" and a "fraud" used by corrupt officers to pay for holiday homes and clothes. These are astonishing slamming comments for a Tory. Her entire speech could easily have been delivered by a Labour MP. She ended with the words, "Remember Hillsborough."
This is the Conservative party's strategy for winning the next general election in 2020: To make a lot of very reassuring, liberal noises that don't sound anything like Margaret Thatcher would have said. Cameron used the same ploy, raising the minimum wage, increasing funding for the NHS, and maintaining working tax credits.
The Conservatives have been polling four points or more ahead of Labour ever since.
Now the Tories are looking at Labour and licking their lips. Corbyn has waged civil war on the moderate wing of his party. The leadership fight with Angela Eagle will not be over for weeks. If Corbyn wins, the country will face a choice between the red meat socialism of Corbyn and the relatively liberal (for the Tories), moderate, "one nation" Conservatism of May, with plenty of policies borrowed from the soft-left of Labour.
Given that scenario, it is hard to see a British majority voting for Labour when they can get most of what they want from a May government without handing the country's cheque book over to Corbyn.
*Theresa May, as the home secretary, is actually currently in charge of the criminal justice system and has the power to already overhaul or investigate processes - so there is some chutzpah here.