VOTING for a political party is a bit like getting married.
When they are wooing you, potential partners and politicians both make promises about what they’re going to do for you.
It could be loving and cherishing you ’til death do you part, or cutting crime and tackling NHS waiting lists.
Most of us take the plunge eventually, and whether it’s saying “I do” in front of family and friends or putting a cross in a box in a polling booth, it all comes down to one thing — trust.
We all have to ask ourselves the same thing: Will the man or woman of our dreams be faithful and true to their marriage vows?
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And will the party we vote for stick to their manifesto pledges?
I’m a hopeless romantic who was lucky enough to marry the man of my dreams but, when it comes to my vote, I’ve been very unlucky in love.
Time and again, I’ve voted for politicians and parties that have let me down and broken their promises.
But, just like straying husbands, politicians have a habit of trying to work their way back into our hearts, even after they’ve failed us year after year.
Come election time, they will toil tirelessly to convince us that they’ve changed, that they will never let us down again, if only we’d give them the benefit of the doubt just one more time.
And that, folks, is pretty much where we’re at with the Conservative Government right now.
After 14 long years — and quite a few Prime Ministers — they are asking us to trust them again, to believe that they are our knights in shining armour.
Popular policies are being rolled out before us in a bid to win us over, like an eager suitor showering us with gifts of flowers and chocolates.
Whether it’s the Rwanda policy to tackle the Channel migrants, or promising to slash visas for legal migrants, or spending billions to tackle long NHS hospital waiting lists, or taking on the shoplifters and the knife gangs, or even today’s announcement about banning gender ideology in schools, they are trying to woo us back.
The trouble is that while most of the policies on offer are good, they come against the backdrop of years of betrayal and failure.
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After all, it was the Tories who promised to reduce net migration to under 100,000 a year before seeing it jump to 745,000 in 2022.
It was this Government that oversaw the massive influx of illegal migrants on dinghies.
It was the Conservatives who allowed NHS waiting lists to skyrocket (and long before Covid).
The explosions in shoplifting and knife crime have both happened under the Tory watch, too.
I can’t even give credit to them for finally taking on the dangerous scourge of gender ideology in our schools, banning teachers from telling our children there are 72 genders and that some people are “born in the wrong body”.
After all, who allowed that to happen in our classrooms in the first place?
Oh yes, the Tories.
I’m afraid Rishi Sunak has a long way to go to convince me and many millions of voters that he won’t let us down if we lend him our vote.
He is not, after all, our only suitor.
The polls suggest that millions think it’s time to move on to a new beau, believing that Labour’s Keir Starmer is a better bet for the future.
But would the grass really be greener on the other side?
What evidence do we have that he would be any more trustworthy than Sunak?
Given Starmer’s flip-flopping on every issue to date, I would say that is a leap of faith too far.
Our spouses ask us to stay true ’til death us do part on our wedding day.
We can only hope that our politicians will stay true to their promises once the polling stations close on election day.
- Listen to Julia on TalkTV, 10am-1pm, Monday to Thursday.
Art of the crimson king… I love it!
I SEEM to be in a minority of one among the British population who actually LIKES the first official painting of King Charles.
The huge vivid red image is a shock to the senses and a beautiful work of art – unlike the usual dour images we see of monarchs in crowns and velvet cloaks.
Although the concept of royalty dates back centuries, there’s no reason why their portraits can’t be brought into the 21st century.
Next time, let’s have an even more up-to-date image – maybe of Charles doing the washing-up or ordering a McDonald’s on Deliveroo.
Never free killer
MY heart goes out to the families of the three innocent people brutally stabbed to death in Nottingham last June by Valdo Calocane.
He is a schizophrenic who was judged to be mentally incapable of committing murder.
The families of his victims, Barnaby Webber, Grace O’Malley-Kumar and Ian Coates, were angry that the Appeal Court ruled this week Calocane’s indefinite hospital order wasn’t “unduly lenient”.
The judge said he would “very probably” spend the rest of his life in a high-security hospital.
Sorry, but “very probably” isn’t good enough.
This dangerous killer must NEVER be set free.
Whether he’s mad or bad or both, we have to accept that some people can never be rehabilitated and that some commit crimes so heinous that they must never be free on our streets again.
Valdo Calocane is very certainly one of those criminals.
Give it a rest, Saint Gary
THE patron saint of BBC virtue-signalling has been at it again.
I’m talking about Gary Lineker, of course, who has been rightly criticised for casually referring to the October 7 massacre in Israel as “the Hamas thing”.
Would he refer to other terror attacks as “the 7/7 thing” or “the Manchester Arena thing”? Of course not. So why this one?
Because Saint Gary wants us to know that he cares about the latest cause celebre – the plight of Palestinians – and he doesn’t want his simple narrative of “good versus evil” to be confused with difficult facts.
Facts like WHY Israel launched military action.
So let me remind you, Gary, that “the Hamas thing” was when Hamas terrorists invaded Israel, murdered 1,200 people, with others raped and tortured, and took 250 hostages.
Stick to talking about football and crisps, mate, because you haven’t got a clue about Gaza.
Swift's mega pay Tay
TAYLOR SWIFT isn’t just a pop sensation, she’s now an economic phenomenon, too.
The singer, who will touch down in the UK next month for the latest leg of her massive Eras world tour, has already made herself a billionaire.
And now she is credited with boosting Britain’s economy to the tune of £1billion.
I’d heard that her concert tickets were expensive but I didn’t realise they were that bad.
It turns out the boost to our national GDP isn’t just down to the ticket price, with Swifties forking out an average of £848 on travel, hotels and meals to see their idol at one of the 15 UK tour dates.
That’s good news for the economy but bad news for Taylor fans who don’t have a spare £200 to pay for the CHEAPEST concert ticket.
Shouldn’t performers care about ALL of their fans, and not just those who can flash the cash?
MP ban is anti-justice
PARLIAMENT voted to suspend any MP arrested for a sexual or violent offence.
That sounds reasonable, huh?
But is it? Whatever happened to the principle that underpins our justice system – innocent until proven guilty?
Anyone can be arrested, but that doesn’t mean they’ve committed a crime.
We’ve seen many celebs accused of sexual assaults, only to discover they are innocent later.
They may walk free but their lives and reputations have been destroyed for ever.