Despite the doom-mongers, the outlook for the economy, the NHS and vital services is good. Coming months should bear that out<\/p>\n
Look up, despite the bleak midwinter, the flu crisis and this dismal mood of political cynicism<\/a>. Despite, too, the daily doom that pumps out of the most hostile media any new government ever faced, savaging whatever Labour does in extravagant language borrowed from Elon Musk. Good grief, the ever-rightward travelling Times just published<\/a> a leader praising Musk\u2019s wild attacks on Keir Starmer, subheaded \u201cHis fundamental critique is correct\u201d. Monday\u2019s tweet from Musk was \u201cPrison for Starmer<\/a>\u201d.<\/p>\n Other blasts of bare-knuckle nonsense include the Mail on Sunday\u2019s \u201cbombshell\u201d front-page news<\/a> saying: \u201cKeir Starmer will be out of No 10 within a year, poll predicts\u201d. Read further to find that 30% of those polled plan to vote Labour in the next election, compared with 23% for the Tories and 22% for Reform. That\u2019s not good, but it\u2019s not yet a crisis, not least because Kemi Badenoch\u2019s Tory unelectables are capsizing in the backwash of Faragism. Labour looks pretty solid in comparison: despite the unpopular winter fuel means-testing, it is closer to voters on key issues, as VAT on private schools is hugely popular<\/a>, and twice as many<\/a> think the budget\u2019s tax rises were \u201cnecessary\u201d as not.<\/p>\n Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist<\/p>\n Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Despite the doom-mongers, the outlook for the economy, the NHS and vital services is good. Coming months should bear that out Look up, despite the bleak midwinter, the flu crisis and this dismal mood of political cynicism. Despite, too, the daily doom that pumps out of the most hostile media any new government ever faced, … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}