17:25

It’s unfair to pick on a Freudian slip, especially one by a rather promising new MP, so apologies to Lucy Frazer. But when she ended her remarks to a Policy Exchange fringe meeting on low income squeezed middle voters by saying the Tories could win many victories ‘if we see that people are on our side’ (I suspect she meant ‘if people see we are on their side’) she inadvertently put her finger on the problem in Manchester.

The Tories know they have a historic opportunity to reach C2 voters who don’t like what Jeremy Corbyn has to say on defence or immigration but are suspicious of Tory economic policy. What they’ve not quite grasped is that announcing you’re on working people’s side, while staying in your own comfort zone, isn’t enough; you have to visibly move towards them or it looks like you don’t mean it. With tax credit cuts for those people looming, the policy hasn’t yet caught up with the new political positioning.