ANYONE watching the Tory Party conference could only conclude that this is a government on its last legs.

Instead of offering a plan to deal with the huge crises facing our communities, it felt more like a Tory leadership hustings as ministers jockeyed for position in anticipation of losing the next election.

Lacklustre ministerial speeches in a near-empty hall offered no answers to any of the deep problems that scar our country.

Bizarrely, Rishi Sunak claimed to be the “change candidate” but his so-called vision was more of what we have seen over the past 13 years of Tory failure — slashing infrastructure projects, boasting of low taxes on corporations, attacking those on benefits and blaming trade unions for the problems in our public services.

Elsewhere, the Home Secretary gave a vile Trump-style speech scapegoating migrants and other vulnerable groups. Other ministers even pushed far-right conspiracy theories from the darkest corners of the internet.

Outside the main hall, it was even worse. Liz Truss held her growth rally claiming she was right all along, with Tories queuing up to get her signature on her “plan for growth” that helped crash the economy last year, while Nigel Farage danced with Priti Patel in a clear sign of the direction the Tories are heading post-election.

The Tories have nothing to offer the people who increasingly stop me in the street to tell me nothing works any more.

Nothing to help those who tell me they cannot afford a decent place to live, or that they’re sick of the inequality that has left so many people using foodbanks.

They rightly say that the government does not seem to care about them, just the wealthy. They want investment in services that are now on their knees.

As the Tories march to the extreme right, fighting culture wars to distract from their own failings, this is a huge opportunity for our movement to build a new consensus, one that truly replaces the Tory ideas that have dominated politics since Thatcher, and one that can begin to deal with the real challenges we face.

Hopefully, in the next 12 months, we will have a general election, boot out the Tories and secure a Labour government.

The challenges for the next Labour government will be huge: schools crumbling before our eyes, record NHS waiting lists, rivers turned into open sewers, millions in fuel and food poverty, weak wages, and the biggest attack on living standards in decades.

Tackling all that means ditching the Tory ideas and policies they have relentlessly pursued in office and which have driven the crises we face.

Tory austerity has not only deliberately decimated the public services we all rely on but weakened the wider economy.  

The Tory obsession with free-market “trickle-down” economics has forced still more into poverty while sucking the vast wealth in our country up into fewer and fewer hands.  

And the Tory dogma that the private sector is best-placed to deliver public services was shown up for the danger it is during the pandemic. Profit was put before public health — with deadly consequences.

All that needs to be binned. Instead of more cuts — as the Tories have pencilled in for the next parliament — we’ll need public investment to kick-start the economy and rebuild public services like our NHS.

Instead of relying on the market to solve all our problems, we will need an active government to address the structural inequalities and low pay that scar our society.  

And instead of sowing division and hate, we will need to give communities hope.

Labour’s policies like the New Deal for Workers to strengthen trade union rights, our plans for huge investment in renewables and home insulation to slash bills and tackle climate change, and the renationalisation of rail services are all a break with the failed Tory policies of the last 13 years. They will make a real difference to people’s lives.

But the challenges for the next Labour government will be so huge that we will need to build on those policies to more fully undo the Tory damage.

In doing so, our movement can learn from left-of-centre governments already in power and the policies they are pursuing. For example, the Spanish government’s windfall tax on the banks that are making super-profits from higher interest rates. Or Joe Biden’s push for higher taxes on the super-rich.  

These types of policies show how billions could be raised here to tackle the social emergency we face by, for example, providing free school meals and scrapping the cruel two-child benefit cap.

Tackling the growing wealth inequality in this way could also provide crucial funds for investing in our economy, tackling the climate crisis and rebuilding our key infrastructure.

We can take great hope from the clear shift in public mood in response to the decade of Tory misrule and the broad support this has generated for real alternatives.

Polls show that three in four people support a 1-2 per cent wealth tax on those with over £10 million that could raise billions every year to rebuild services, including over two-thirds of Tory voters.  

They show the vast majority, again including two-thirds of Tory voters and “red wall” voters, back public ownership of key utilities like energy, water and mail. And six in 10 voters who backed the Tories in 2019 support workers’ rights being strengthened.

The Tories have let people down for far too long. To turn the page on the chaos they have caused, we need a Labour government as soon as possible and we need to bury the Tory policies that have caused the multiple crises we now face.

Richard Burgon is Labour MP for Leeds East.