Will the economy save the Tories?
This week Dominic Cummings said the Tories may have 'crossed the event horizon'. He was trying to find a tech bro way of saying the game is up: they're finished as an electoral force and it's only Labour, Reform and the Lib Dems still in play. But might the Tories have one last chance? If they do, that chance will come from the economy.
Next week the shadow chancellor, Mel Stride, will try to make the case for the Tories being the party of economic responsibility in a keynote speech to the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. 'Our country faces significant and increasing challenges both at home and abroad,' he will say. 'Challenges that will require a far stronger economy if they are to be met. An economy that can only be delivered through a radical rewiring.'
This won't be a speech announcing new policies, a Conservative source tells me, but will instead set out 'the direction of travel, in stark contrast to Farage's fantasy economics'.
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