VERY SHORT THREAD. My dad has voted Tory in the last few elections. He will now be voting Labour. The tipping point for him was the fact that we have the highest death toll from coronavirus per capita in the world.

(1) The way he sees it, the pandemic has offered a perfect measure of the quality of leadership because every country has been battling the pandemic so a good comparison between our leadership and the leadership of other countries is possible.

(2) And viewed this way, he just doesn’t understand why we have the highest death toll in the world. We’re an island. We’re a developed country. Our death rate should be much lower. So he believes it is the result of poor governance.

(3) He voted Tory before largely because he felt he had no other choice. He hated Corbyn. But now he sees Keir Starmer demolish the PM every week at PMQs using sneaky tactics like “preparing” and “knowing what he’s talking about” and he suddenly sees an alternative.

(4) He also saw the Tories as the party of science and innovation. But then he watched the party of science and innovation fail to contain a pandemic that they had ample time to prepare for after watching other countries succumb to it, and he has revised his views accordingly.

(5) He saw Boris’s bumbling idiot routine as an endearing act but believed that he would actually be a competent PM. The pandemic has lifted the curtain and showed him that he’s just a bumbling idiot.

(6) So my dad will be voting Labour now. But this is only possible because Labour finally has a competent, capable leader who is able to mount a formidable opposition. I suspect he isn’t the only one. If the Tories aren’t already getting nervous, they should be.