Ninety-nine per cent certain! At the prospect of this inevitable defeat, what should those long-shot Tories do?
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Dump Rishi? Call BoJo? Join Reform? Anoint Kemi or Penny? Run and hide and cower behind the sofa?
An alarming number of Conservative MPs have concluded yes, definitely run and hide and cower behind the sofa.
An astonishing 63 Tory MPs — so far! — are jacking it in before the general election, announcing they are standing down and will not seek re-election in their constituency.
How did a party elected with an 80-seat landslide become so gutless?
These Tory bottle jobs recall that famous scene in The Godfather when Johnny Fontane, the washed—up Las Vegas crooner, goes to see Don Vito Corleone and sits there whimpering with tearful self-pity.
“What’s the matter with you?,” Don Corleone screams at his blubbing godson. “Is this how you turn out? A Hollywood finocchio (wimp) who cries like a woman? ‘Oh what can I do? Oh what can I do?’.”
This craven Tory capitulation to Labour is like the tears of Johnny Fontane. Pathetic — and unforgivable.
The Tories are NOT facing the 43-year-old Tony Blair in 1997. They are facing the 61-year-old Keir Starmer in 2024.
And it is maddening to have the likes of Labour’s shadow immigration minister, Stephen Kinnock, currently crowing about the latest illegal arrivals and telling Sunak to “get a grip”.
Oh, Mr Kinnock — are you going to show us how it is done? Really?
Why don’t I believe you?
Why do I have the hunch that Labour will allow immigration — both legal and illegal — to soar to unprecedented heights?
With so many Tories already waving the white flag, it no longer seems quite so bonkers to seriously contemplate getting yet another unelected Prime Minister off the substitute’s bench.
Rishi can’t be like tired and confused Joe Biden in the White House, who clings to power only because vanity prevents him from walking away.
Our country deserves better.
I personally don’t think the general election will be as bad for the Tories as every poll predicts.
Country deserves better
Reform is currently doing better than ever, but I can’t believe that all those disillusioned patriots will really vote for Reform — and let in Labour.
Because I can’t believe Reform supporters are that stupid.
And whatever happens, the Tories will rebuild again — as Labour did after Jeremy Corbyn ran out of road.
But at least show some spine!
Almost 14million people voted Tory in 2019.
A Government that was elected with an 80-seat landslide is now meekly throwing in the towel.
And who wants to vote for that?
The 63 Tory MPs who are bailing out — and the self-harming defectors to Reform, and all the quitters, doubters and bottle jobs — need the kind of pep talk that Don Vito Corleone gave Johnny Fontane in The Godfather.
And if Rishi Sunak really can’t do it, then he should get out of the way today and let someone else have a go.
Live And Let Dire, Roger
IN the debate about the next James Bond – Aaron Taylor-Johnson is hot favourite – we forget there have been some abysmal 007s.
Outrageously foppish Roger Moore was Bond for 12 years.
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Suave smoothie Pierce Brosnan for seven.
That’s nearly 20 years where the most famous spy in the world was played by someone who looked like an ageing hairdresser.
Sean Connery and Daniel Craig are the only Bonds worthy of the role.
Aaron may never be another Connery or Craig.
But he can hardly fail to be better than Roger Moore.
Fellas poles apart
TAYLOR SWIFT plays eight dates at Wembley Stadium this summer and London is already getting excited.
The newly launched London Boy Tour by ToursByLocals takes in the London spots where Taylor has loved, lived and ordered a kebab.
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London Boy was, as any Swifty knows, the song Taylor wrote during her relationship with English actor Joe Alwyn.
During their six years together, Joe took Taylor to the Bull & Gate pub in Kentish Town, the Kentish Delight kebab shop and walking on Hampstead Heath.
The simple life.
Taylor was recently pictured with new squeeze Travis Kelce at a private $15,000-a-night villa in the Bahamas.
The Kansas City Chiefs hunk is also said to have blown an estimated £943,000 on private jets to follow Taylor on tour.
Taylor’s Super Bowl-strutting billionaire lifestyle with the Kansas City tight end is light years from her kebab-noshing, pub-going London life with Joe Alwyn.
I wonder when she was happier?
DESPITE England failing to win either of their friendlies with Brazil and Belgium, I still know that we will win the Euros in Germany.
The first World Cup I remember was 1966, so I always feel this optimism about England’s prospects.
There has never been a more gifted England squad – or an England manager who has the side as deep in his DNA as Gareth Southgate.
After England win the Euros, the palaver about Nike’s “playful update” by dicking about with the flag of St George will be forgotten.
This gilded generation of Bellingham, Foden, Kane, Walker, Saka, Rice and the rest will be hailed as the greatest England team of all time.
On the England Instagram page, there was footage of the players lining up with the young mascots before the Belgium match on a cold, wet night in London.
Bellingham took off his tracksuit top and placed it over the youngster in a wheelchair in front of him.
Class act, that Jude Bellingham. And a class act, this England.
THE attack on the Russian concert hall by Islamist terrorists was barbaric.
But the torture inflicted on the suspects is also shocking and barbaric.
No doubt plenty of countries would torture suspected terrorists.
But only Putin’s brutal, brutalised Russia would boast about it online.
“THIS ain’t a country album,” Beyonce says of Cowboy Carter, her, er, country album.
“This is a Beyonce album.”
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It might also be a masterpiece.
There are 27 tracks and, if you hear just one of them, then make it Beyonce’s gritty update of Jolene by Dolly Parton.
It is even better than the original.
Although I don’t remember that “bitch” reference in Dolly’s version.
Kate’s worst trolls
HARRY and Meghan only found out about Kate’s cancer diagnosis at the same time as everyone else.
Because the Markles can’t be trusted.
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The Duke and Duchess of Sussex have spent the last few years gleefully smearing the family that gave them everything, including the titles they milk until they squeak today.
So it is a bit rich of the Markles to privately reach out to Kate when they have directly caused William and Catherine so much pain (yes, they reached out so privately that People magazine knew about it).
It is three years since Meghan told Oprah Winfrey that, when she was pregnant with her first child, there were “concerns and conversations about how dark his skin might be when he was born”.
“Is the Royal Family racist, sir?” a reporter asked Prince William the day after the “racist royals” bombshell dropped.
What a humiliating question for a decent, kind man like our future King to have to answer.
After the Oprah betrayal, there was the Markles’ sneering Netflix documentary and Harry’s “tell-all” book, Spare.
Harry, Meghan and their lickspittle sycophants have been spitting poison at William and Catherine for years.
Kate has been hideously trolled by cruel, snickering, low-life sadists.
But nobody has trolled Kate quite as bad as Harry and Meghan.
THE statue of Prince Philip that has been slated for removal in Cambridge does not look much like the late Duke of Edinburgh.
But it is a dead ringer for one of J K Rowling’s faceless Dementors in the Harry Potter series.
I wonder if Prince Philip would’ve liked it?