They’re back from the dead. We thought we’d driven a stake through their rotten hearts in the Labour landslide of 1997. Now they’re 13 points ahead in the polls.

Perhaps people have forgotten what the Tories did. Under Thatcher and Major they ran Britain from 1979 to 1997.

• ·     They took on and destroyed the miners, whose numbers went from 140,000 then to about 6,000 now. This was cold blooded murder of working class communities.

• ·     At Orgreave during the 1984-85 miners’ strike we saw police used as footsoldiers in a civil war against the working class.

• ·     Thatcher’s legacy – child poverty went from one in seven to one in three

• ·     Thatcher took unemployment to three million, partly as a deliberate policy to weaken the unions. As Chancellor Norman Lamont said, “If unemployment is the price that has to be paid for getting down inflation, then it is a price well worth paying.” The Tories are the party of mass unemployment.

• ·     On ‘black Wednesday’ September 1992 the same Lamont in effect threw schools and hospitals into the sea as he wasted £27 billions of our reserves trying to prop up the pound.

• ·     The Major government then descended into farce, with MP Neil Hamilton asking cash for questions in the House of Commons, an orgy of sleaze and a ‘back to basics’ ethical campaign which became ‘carry on bonking’ for Tory ministers.

• ·     When Thatcher introduced the infamous poll tax, the Tories justified it by asking, “Why should a duke pay more than a dustman?” That’s still their attitude. That’s why Boris Johnson doesn’t want gas guzzling Chelsea tractors to pay a higher congestion charge than cars owned by ordinary folk.

They were evil, disgusting and ridiculous. They still are. They should be history. So why are they making a comeback? Because New Labour have been rumbled. They said they were being prudent with the economy. They talked about, ‘no return to boom and bust.’ Now we can see that they were just lucky. If they carry on the way they have been running things, bust is coming our way and there’s nothing they will be able to do about it.