Most folk won’t remember the old Irwin Allen cheesy sci-fi shows of the 70’s- you know like Lost in Space and Land of the Giants. Well in Lost in Space there was this cowardly, invidious charlatan of a character named Dr Smith that always tried to thwart the efforts of the valiant Space Family Robinson trying to survive in hostile alien environments. Well he’d always cry out “Oh the Pain…the Pain….!” when found out or on the precipice of facing some life threatening peril.
Well I have no medical degree as I managed a D in Physics for my efforts despite good grades in Biology and Chemistry when I retook them for entry into med school. Still it wasn’t enough, it felt not unlike Amber Rudd waiting for her third recount in Hastings or the Kensington contrived overnight repeated attempts at trying to determine a winner. Not to mention the experience of Tim Farron as he managed to hold onto his seat with just a sliver of a 700 majority.
You’ve lost that exit feeling……
All must have been wringing their hands in the same way as I was. But by early Friday morning my hopes were dashed a second time as they were way back in 1989. I had this sinking feeling that I managed to fumble the application of Fleming’s left hand rule and got upended by a particularly nasty Young’s Modulus question.
The exit feeling reflected the polls and it was on a knife edge. Like a careening out of control dragster with tires smoking and sliding over a hair pin bend the inevitable hard truth was inescapable. “Oh the Pain…the Pain….!”
The nervous wait was over, as the bong prompted Dimbleby to tell the nation that the Tories had struck a barrier to be flung back into the circuit. The low slung, slick and now much dented Tory party machine was about to be pulled back just shy of the finishing line. The engine timing belt was predicted to give out at a most inopportune moment, with little left as ‘Momentum’ was progressively with the other side.
Then it was a case of waiting for the results to roll in to vindicate some of the polling crystal balls so derided for their lack of clarity. I tend to be a creature of habit so always stick to the BBC’s coverage on election nights. However this time I did have the benefit of a second TV featuring Sky. Voyeuristic me.
So I watched the younglings in Newcastle or was it Sunderland, wherever it was they did their traditional mad dash thing to be the first to declare. Not sure who came first and kind of didn’t care as I knew things were not looking too rosy for the Tories. Unlike Labour’s flower predicted to bloom by the end of the night. Not a win obviously but a largely symbolic victory that meant that David gave Goliath a few nasty cuts to the shins and a broken kneecap to nurse.
In short as the results came to confirm surprise losses to Labour it indicated how poorly fought the campaign was by May and her two entrenched advisers.
Teresa Palpatine May must have applied a bit of scotch tape to the edges of her mouth as she ran the heckling media gauntlet when it came to making an appearance for her count in true blue Maidenhead. A raving loony monster had raised its hirsute hydra head but it looked like the many had been tickled and a tad enchanted.
I watched bleary eyed as John Curtis the Yoda of the polling industry suggest that the exit polls would indeed be borne out once all the cashing up had been done by the early morning.
So by about 4am it was clear that the Tories would never make the magic figure of 326 and that a hard Brexit would be the first casualty in addition to the establishment of grammar schools. The DUP sharks smelled blood before it seeped and were already making undertones of supporting the Tory beached whale.
Trouble up North of the Border
Further shocks at how the political landscape has also changed in Scotland as a consequence of the overnight earthquake were felt all the way to Westmonster. The swathes of blanketing yellow now becoming a patchwork quilt of red, blue and a tinge of beige. Maybe many in Scotland objected to the noise of the First Minister’s £35,000 Nicolacopter rental fee or the £7,000 brolly. Salmond losing his seat might mean that Nicola’s tenure as leader is also brought into question. I watched Angus Robertson bow out so its a new leader to represent their diminished standing in the London House. Whatever happens any thoughts of a sequel to IndyRef1 have been shelved indefinitely.
The Lib-dems had their own casualty in the form of Clegg, but the universe balanced things out with the old stalwart Cable filling the vacuum to cause the Tories future grief.
As the night melted away it became clear that the proportion of Tory ministerial scalps would exceed the number of seats required to reach that coveted majority. Sadly it served as a further damnation to May’s stage managed and parochial campaign appearances.
It’s no laughing matter for die hard conservatives as power in absolute terms is what gets them up in the morning. They are a ruthless bunch and so wait in the wings, hunkering down to instil a period of ‘stability’. Calm before the storm.
Strange bedfellows
The mighty have fallen from such a great height that I can spare a couple of thoughts for the Arch Angel Gabriel and no amount of glue is going to get them wings back on especially when you’re thinking about selling your soul to the devil.
The DUP’pers are playing it coy, ‘strengthening their hand’ by making the Tories sweat as they’re planning on taking the weekend off, after all it has been a long and fractious campaign. So it comes as no surprise that many have pointed out the questionable alliance of convenience just to shore up the brittle majority in the house.
I can imagine Berkow if he gets to be speaker again, will be all the more hoarser when the reshuffled parliament finally convenes once the anticipated Queen’s speech is done and dusted- if it ever does.
Did May change from her red outfit to blue as an indication that she was still in charge and wouldn’t resign? Well I don’t think she would have opted for neutral colours when she made her plea to Her Majesty to form the next government. I wonder if the Queen breathed a sigh of relief that her hand wasn’t being tickled by a poorly trimmed republican beard.
Signs and Portents so misread
All the commentators predicated a boring campaign and that the writing was on the wall because Corbyn was so toxic to the electorate. How wrong they were and how right to some extent the polls had been. Terror attacks were another aspect thrown into the maelstrom mix of manifesto u-turns, police cuts, the NHS, as all of it blended into a messy goop that clogged the arteries of a restricted Tory perspective serving as succour to a rejuvenated and now heart transplanted Labour.
I’m not going to go into what went wrong, it’s pretty blooming obvious. The Conservatives strike me as a bunch of out of touch folk sitting in their resplendent stuffy chambers and reliant on their foot soldiers to do the dirty. Or I might be wrong and painting a cliche. Why did they just sit back and permit a leader so unqualified and unchecked to bumble her way through the campaign? Why did they not cost up the Labour manifesto and the half a trillion it would cost the country each year for all the free stuff it promised? The mind boggles, although now it’s academic.
Labour tapped into the establishment discontent using social media to get their wishful thinking message across. It also shows that the traditional newspapers are facing stiff competition to the pop up social media smart weaponry that has been targeting those receptive enough with laser guided accuracy.
So what happens now? Tory’s have a majority and no doubt they’ll build a new engine for their addled dragster. A bit of cosmetic body work will hide the encroaching rust and mangled chassis. But it’s a case of all business as usual and moving from the slogan of ‘Strong and Stable’ to ‘Let’s get to work.’ Smoke and mirrors I’ll say as it won’t be long before the sparks from all that knife sharpening is going to further ignite Tory fury when the first Queen’s speech might face a rough ride or perhaps dare I say be voted down.
Fightin’ talk
But somehow the survival instinct will mean that the Tories will prevail, shaky and making compromises to the extent that earlier most professed values and pledges become forgotten. After all Arlene Foster and not Sturgeon will be wagging the scarred fighting dog. Ditch the triple lock and stubbornly introduce the dementia tax at your peril.
Labour on the other hand hope to ban this new Tory breed. The reality is that the Labour pooch has been effectively leashed by its 261 seat grab but it managed to bite through and howl about its triumph and viability to govern.
Emily Thornberry has delusions as does Corbyn they feel that the Tory’s need to grow a conscious and step aside and allow them to be the rightful and righteous rulers. Come on after all they faced off the Tory Jaguar Xj220 with a clapped out P-reg Nissan Micra with the engine from an F-16 jet fighter they got as a Buy it Now off eBay and can justifiably claim a victory.
But it was not a photo finish, hardly a dead heat. Say the Tories do the ‘honourable’ thing and step aside (ain’t gonna happen, but hey I like Star Trek and parallel universe stories). Okay they have a radical Queen’s speech and the Corbynites will try to shock and awe through social media that their budget is the best thing since the second coming as representative of their leadership messiah.
What’ll happen is that it’ll get the same voting down treatment but this time by the Tory opposition. In reality Labour would hope to cling tenuously to a minority power grab following a vote of no confidence in the Tories- which I feel is their intention anyway. That will give them second dibs and its’ rinse hang out to dry and then repeat until the true labour motives are revealed- another general election. When you have nothing to lose and everything to gain, then in many ways you have a position of unrivalled power.
Labour probably have a view that with the help of their Momentum hard left friends and all of the teeny boppers they’ll squeak into government given the undeniable gravitational force of support forcing the bookies to revamp their predictive algorithms.
But here’s a sobering thought- As bad a campaign as that waged by dumb-ass, stubborn, bloody difficult woman May has been they still nearly clinched a majority. This in the face of the mass rallies as fuelled by the gravitas surrounding the juggernaut gaining so much kinetic momentum that it rolled over a lot of sticky votes.
From technical standpoints Labour lost but a sobering examination of the numbers reveals they were just shy of 2000 votes of getting a majority that would have handed the keys to a different kind of mayhem. In short Labour might, just might get into power one day. Oh dear….
May out before next June?
I guess talking therapies might help, but you can imagine the Tory rage, the fat pulsing veins in temples as torches are being lit. It might be business as usual but the machinations are happening covertly, the days of May are seriously numbered.
My unqualified guess is she will be allowed to get through a Queen’s speech and with that business done then it’s a matter of a few months before that infamous lectern gets put out before Number 10 to face the nation. I think it would be best if Larry the Cat stood in to deliver the news of May’s departure and another leadership contest. Who will takeover? Boris? Davis? Leadsome? Is there anyone??
Difference this time is that the Blues will learn and hopefully change their tune that’ll not sink their Eurovision Brexit fortunes or get them kicked out from office for decades to come. One thing as a dead cert, the Tories will not want another election any time soon despite the state of flux within British politics. The time is to lick wounds, strengthen resolve and have a few more traditional British Heart Attack fry-ups on a plate.
All in all labour did provide a platform and voice to those a little dispossessed and feeling forgotten. Establishment parties are discovering that public mood shifts are following same global patterns much to the delight of the once side-lined anarchists and die hard activists. It’s cool to be aligned with those sprouting morality and engendering this misplaced trust in prospective regimes that promise a free lunch and glossing over the payday loan interest to be paid back.
Let’s be Frank or an average Judy or even Mohammed, Labour seized on the initiative first with offering what people want- a sense of hope, that they are the true rebels fighting against the nasty party so detached from the struggles of the forsaken masses. If an election were to be held today yes Labour might improve their fortunes but I doubt that it will get them into office. But I’m prepared to have an open mind given my last tentative predictions. If they do get in Tories face oblivion.
The thing is the British people are far from stupid, since the referendum result last year a lot has happened they have witnessed the changing dynamics of elections in other countries as there is a marked shift towards the left. The economy has also suffered the effects of currency speculative dips and stuff like iceberg lettuces are getting pricier. Furthermore being on the right of centre is akin to being called a fascist in this new social media love thy neighbour age. Folk are quick to judge, cast aspersions and the masses follow because it’s what is acceptable and in vogue. Cue shy Tories building bunkers in their large back gardens.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, The Conservatives might like to trade in their battered battle bus for a time travelling DeLorean if only they could get their burnt fingers on a flux capacitor. I guess a paradigm shift has happened and that although the two party politics model is alive and well, there is a need to be nimble, quick to think on your feet, muster your special forces to leverage your support base to shout from the top of the rooftops on your behalf. The Tories were battered by the social media storm and sat back as their umbrellas turned inside out.
Whatever happens next I’m not going to say “Oh the pain….the pain.” I’ve taken a few Ibuprofens to dull the ache from disappointment. Have to add as a former leftie I could not buy into the labour message, with age comes wisdom and stubbornness.
Moreover I don’t go in for fry ups too often as I’m pretty lean, nimble and a bit of a survivor. The coming months will offer more fodder for everyone to chew on. Safe to say, I am hoping for a ring side seat at the first PMQ’s when Corbyn faces off a derailed May. Will she dither? The body language, the Cheshire Cat smiles from the front benches……How Hollywood hasn’t bought the rights to this one I’m not sure……
Blast I just burned the bacon…….Oh the Pain…..the Pain….!