Election 2019 - The Aftermath

A Conservative landslide, Labour humiliation and the leader out, LibDems marginalised and the leader out, "British Lion Roars" according to the Daily Express.

And yet - in England the Conservatives won only 47.2% of the vote. Across the UK, 43.6%. The nation as a whole did not endorse the government of our local mp B. Johnson.

In Scotland the result apparently justifies fresh calls for a referendum on independence but the SNP secured just 45% of the vote and manifestly do not have a mandate for it.

Funny business, politics.

I also noted that apparently Labour had sent "hundreds" of supporters to my constituency, Uxbridge and Ruislip South. What on earth were they doing? If each knocked on just 50 doors a day over a three day period that would be a minimum of 30,000 dwellings comprising the whole of the constituency. Nobody knocked on my door, I saw none of them in the street, there is not a single Labour poster to be seen (actually damn few for any party) and even yesterday, in Uxbridge town centre, they were invisible. That has to be the least effectual canvassing in electoral history. Not that a decent effort would have made any difference, of course.

We now have a government with enough support to enable it to pass its legislative programme but whether they have the faintest idea what they actually want to achieve is anybody's guess, since the only concrete ideas so far to emerge is the mantra "Get Brexit Done" with all the negotiations still to be done, and "supporting" the NHS which the Conservatives have happily run down in the past ten years.

However if one good thing came out of the election it was the sudden elimination of the Ulster DUP from the national scene. No longer does the government need to rely on their handful of seats ( now reduced by a couple including their leader at Westminster). This may well be a significant step toward the reunification of Ireland because the Conservatives have nothing to lose by abandoning Ulster behind a new customs barrier. Equally, having been wiped out in Scotland they may feel the same way about the Union. We shall see.