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Theresa May and the Conservatives will win the general election. There, I've said it.

I hate to be a wet blanket on a sunny June day. I know Corbynmania is exciting a lot of decent people.

And I'm sorry to put a dampener on anyone who believes the most astonishing triumph in recent British political history is in reach and they need to plan victory parties.

But it's time for a rude reality check.

I just don't think Prime Minister Jeremy is going to happen.

Here are five reasons why I think an undeserving Mrs Mayhem and the Tories will still win - and nobody would be more delighted than me if I'm wrong.

(Image: PA)

1. LIES, DAMNED LIES AND OPINION POLLS

Opinion polls were recording big leads for the Conservatives just a week ago - and were promptly denounced as a Tory voodoo plot by assorted left-wingers.

Then the gap narrowed. The revisionist position is now to embrace the polls that tell them what they want to hear as scientific - and ignore the ones that don't.

This peaked earlier this week with a YouGov survey which put the Tory lead down to a slender 3% hailed as the dog's b*llocks. Meanwhile an ICM poll for The Guardian giving the Tories a 12% lead didn't exist.

YouGov readily admits its methodology translating votes to seats is controversial.

It’s also highly elastic when the firm puts the Cons on as low as 285 to as high as 353 and Labour ranging from 219 to 285.

So it’s a hung Parliament or a Tory majority of around 60! When it's based on 75 respondents per constituency, I fear its offering false hope for Labour supporters.

In 2015 - in a 650 seat Parliament - the Cons finished on 331 seats on 36.% of the votes cast and Labour 232 on 30.4%.

The Tories were ahead by 99 seats. Yes, 99. Labour would need to win 50 seats and take back Copeland to be the biggest party. That ain’t going to happen.

While the polls are undoubtedly closing, the Cons maintain healthy leads in most of them. For YouGov to be right, all the others would need to be wrong.

May’s 24% leads are history. Tory talk of matching Thatcher or Blair’s landslides is over but Ukip purple Tories are going home.

Many polls failed to chart Brexit, Trump and David Cameron’s majority two years ago.

So there’ll continue to be those predicting a Labour Government by next weekend. But count me out.

2. FOLLOW THE LEADER

(Image: AFP)

Theresa May has had a stupendously bad campaign, the worst of any serving Prime Minister in living memory.

Breaking a manifesto promise BEFORE the election with her humiliating U-turn on a social care cap tops even Gordon Brown’s “bigoted woman” gaffe.

He can claim he misheard Gillian Duffy and didn’t know a microphone was live.

But May devised a flagship policy which sank within days and continues to cause her trouble.

This breathtaking complacency of arrogance from an aloof leader who believes herself entitled to a coronation rather than a contest means Mayhem's authority is irreparably dented.

Even if she wins a increase in the Tories 17 majority, she is a loser whose frailties are cruelly exposed.

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Yet she retains a lead as best Prime Minister over Corbyn, 43% to 30% according to YouGov.

The rating is considered a reliable guide to who will be Downing Street’s tenant from June 9.

The same is true of which party is viewed most competent economically, the Tories again holding an inexplicable (to me anyway) second lead over Labour.

TV’s no-show Timid Theresa’s been found out but in the country she’s still preferred to Comrade Corbyn.

3. KNOWN KNOWNS

(Image: REUTERS)

Scrutinising the tax and spending plans of each party is entirely legitimate.

What isn’t valid is examining Labour forensically, then giving the Conservatives a virtual free pass.

And what’s indefensible is for Labour to know what’s coming then let loose on the airwaves - Jeremy Corbyn on childcare, Diane Abbott on policing - woefully ill-prepared to answer basic questions.

Every embarrassing silence or stumble reinforces the grotesquely unfair impression that Labour is financially irresponsible, a curse the party’s failed to free itself from since the 2008 banking crash.

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In 2008, both the deficit (down from 3.9% to 2.1%) and debt (down from 42% to 35% of GDP) were lower than those inherited from the Conservatives in 1997.

Greedy reckless banksters in the US and Britain created the crash, not spending on schools and hospitals.

The deficit and debt soared in a crashing economy as tax receipts fell and the state stepped in to avoid a recession mutating into a depression.

(Image: Leon Neal)

Gordon Brown, Alistair Darling and the Eds, Miliband and Balls, are to blame for voters buying the Tory myth that Labour overspent.

Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell suffered a slip of his own on the size of the deficit (£52bn John, not £68-70bn).

Yet he produced a costed manifesto pricing Labour’s promises at £48.6bn and, Hey Presto!, tax increases magically raising £48.6bn.

Holes are easy to pick in the figures, not least the omission of a single penny to renationalise the £60bn+ water industry, but he did a reasonable rushed job.

Until Labour puts the record straight and screams competency, dismantling the woeful economic record of debt junkey Tories along the way, it will be handicapped in every election.

4. STOP PRESS!

May’s most powerful ally and Labour’s deadliest foe is what Conservative former Cabinet Minister Ken Clarke calls Britain’s Tory press.

Super-rich proprietors, including foreign nationals and users of tax havens, confuse their own interests with those of readers and will loyally promote May even as their editors harbour doubts.

Her thoughts and speeches are sympathetically reported, blunders played down.

Corbyn on the other hand is treated as Public Enemy Number One, constantly abused and smeared.

He isn’t unique. Ed Miliband and, for most of his time in No 10, Gordon Brown received similarly brutal sustained kickings.

The power of the Tory press extends far beyond dwindling newspaper sales.

Broadcasters are under a legal obligation to be objective but they are influenced by what they read on front pages.

Social media too when much comment is prompted by what’s reported and written in the mainstream.

Even the act of mocking silly stories, such as the Daily Mail’s malicious splash claiming the BBC rigged a TV debate audience against Tory Amber Rudd, inadvertently spreads the disinformation and lets the Tory press set the agenda.

That’s a conundrum I’ve never resolved.

But a battery of public prints loyal to the Conservatives and dismissive of Labour is an advantage for May, even as the papers fall out of love with the leader herself.

The propaganda arm behind Brexit aim to keep the Conservatives in power.

5. IT'S THAT MAN AGAIN

Corbyn is often cited on doorsteps by a minority of Labour voters as the reason why they’ll give the party a miss this election.

Many frustrated candidates in the party's heartlands, stretching from North East England via the West Midlands to South Wales, have also told me Jezza’s a negative issue.

Adoring crowds at mass rallies and cyber warriors are excited by a leader in whom they invest their faith.

(Image: Carl Court)

But equally real is the section of the working class, predominantly white though not exclusively so, repelled by him.

The Corbyn these voters dislike is largely the caricature created by the Tories and their Right-wing allies, a cobweb of lies including the fake claims he wants to abolish the Army and smearing his patriotism.

His dealings with the IRA during The Troubles have returned to haunt him and it was an error to sidestep for months allegations which required explaining not dodging.

Anybody who asserts Ireland isn’t hurting Corbyn hasn’t been to communities supplying the poor bloody infantry who served in Ulster.

Brexit continues to shake Labour. I come across Labour Leavers who say Corbyn’s a Remainer and Remainers resentful he’s a Leaver.

Corbyn Uncut, the figure seen and heard directly on TV and radio, is changing minds.

Yet unfortunately it is too late to changed all those made up, many were closed long ago.

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Corbyn and Labour to an extent are having a good campaign because May’s is unbelievably bad.

His leadership shortcomings shouldn’t be overlooked and aren’t by voters, dithering rarely reinterpreted as thoughtfulness.

Wait until the Tories get to work and quote back at him the 160 Labour MPs who wanted him gone last summer.

Few after the 2015 election thought whoever was elected Labour leader would be Prime Minister.

Corbyn’s fighting an unexpectedly lively, valiant fight.

But final destination No 10? I can’t see it.