Don't vote Labour, says ex-Labour MP!

The UK election campaign has only just officially started but already it's turning into a decidedly quirky event. So many Tory MPs have announced they are not going to stand for reelection that Boris and his team must be scrabbling around desperately for new candidates to fill the vacancies. But the most quixotic development was the appeal put out by former Labour MP Ian Austin - he resigned from the Labour Party and became an independent MP in February - for all Labour supporters to vote for the Conservatives. Now that's the sort of gift which Boris has been dreaming about. And it came in the nick of time. Until now Boris's message to voters has been scuppered by all sorts of stupidities by one Conservative or other, most notably the remark on radio by Jacob Never-Forget-I-went-to Eton Rees Mogg about how, if he had been living in one of the burning Grenfell flats, he would have got out fast, ignoring the advice of the London Fire Brigade to stay put. It was common sense, he said. Only someone of Rees Mogg's upbringing - I doubt he has ever lived in a flat - could say such a thing. It might seem common sense while sitting comfortably in a radio studio but to make such a decision when you and your family are trapped in a furiously burning building would have taken huge and risky courage, especially when the voice of authority - the Fire Brigade - was saying "Don't leave". I think I would have stayed if only because at such a frightening time you cling on to the advice of the professionals. Leaving your flat to take your children down a burning stairway would have been more terrifying than hiding in the corner of the flat and praying for rescue. Rees Mogg did more damage to Boris's campaign at that point than anything to do with Brexit because it gave Labour the opportunity to deride the Conservatives as a party out of touch with ordinary folk. But then up pops Ian Austin. He made it simple. There were only two possible prime ministers running in the election, Boris and Jeremy Corbyn. No one else stood a chance, he said. And he couldn't recommend any voter should go for Corbyn because he was an extremist and posed a danger to the nation. Strong stuff. His voice may well be the voice that lasts loudest over the next few weeks. If so, he will have done an enormous service to the country.