One defiant local paper has absolutely shafted Theresa May in the final day of the campaign [IMAGE]

The Blackpool Gazette has delivered a fatal blow to the Theresa May campaign, with an act of local defiance that has gone national.

The front page

The Conservative campaign has deployed wrap-around adverts in local papers across the country. This means that the paper itself is literally wrapped in pages of Conservative campaign literature. When The Blackpool Gazette took the call for a half-page ad on their front page, this is what happened:

Next level trolling from Blackpool Gazette here.
"Half front page ad? No problem."
"What will we run next to it? Oh just some local news…" pic.twitter.com/ErbFajhQDp

— Nɪᴄᴋ Rʜᴏᴅᴇs  🇺🇦 (@nick_rhodes_nz) June 6, 2017

While taking Conservative cash to place the ad, The Blackpool Gazette ran a headline above it which read: Poverty-hit families are forced to rely on food bank handouts. And inside, the paper ran a special report detailing the impact of Conservative austerity on local families.

Food bank Britain

Britain is hungry. The figures from the Trussell Trust, Britain’s largest network of food banks, reveal a staggering rise in emergency food dependency across the country. As shown below, food bank dependency was virtually a non-issue in 2008/9. But the number of emergency food supplies given out now essentially accounts for one in every 60 adults in the UK:

Those numbers, while high, cannot communicate the human suffering they represent. But recently, one woman forced to rely on food banks broke down on the Victoria Derbyshire show. Hundreds of thousands of people across the country are enduring a similar experience:

"It's degrading, especially when you've worked all your life"

Tracey had to use food banks because her Universal Credit was delayed. pic.twitter.com/kb6b4osTBg

— Victoria Derbyshire (@VictoriaLIVE) April 25, 2017

And the number one reason for their plight? The removal and sanctioning of critical welfare support to people in work, people seeking work, and sick and disabled people unable to work:

The Conservative government is directly responsible for pushing ordinary people into food poverty.

While local papers like The Blackpool Gazette are holding the government to account, this is the meltdown happening in the UK’s right-wing tabloids:

The winds of change are blowing

It feels very much like the winds of change are blowing in Britain. So forcefully, in fact, that one of May’s ‘strong and stable’ advertising vans was actually blown over on Tuesday night:

Tory 'strong and stable' advertising van overturns in the wind https://t.co/YYt5N0Rv8i

— 🇪🇺 Sue Galloway #Rejoin#FBPPR#GE (@SueGallowayYk) June 7, 2017

UK voters are wise to the fact that the man who won a Gandhi award for his decades-long peacemaking efforts is no friend to terrorists. They are also wising up to that fact that the most dangerous extremist in Britain lives in Number 10 Downing Street. A woman whose extreme ideology of austerity has fostered the growth of food banks, super-size classrooms, a no-pay/low-pay gig economy, paralysing student debt, and an elderly population forced to choose whether to heat their homes or eat.

They also know they can defeat her with a tick of a box on 8 June. And they just might.

Get Involved!

– Vote on 8 June. And encourage others to do the same.

– Discuss the key policy issues with family members, colleagues and neighbours. And organise! Join (and participate in the activities of) a union, an activist group, and/or a political party.

– You can also support The Canary if you value the work we do.

Featured image via YouTube Screengrab