Election 2017: Is Mrs May bonkers or just daft?

Prime Minister Theresa May is widely reported as having said that, following her wilful destruction of her party's majority in the House of Commons, that she would now govern with the aid of "her friends" (The DUP) and then said "Let's get to work". The "work" is the Brexit negotiations.

Nobody asked you to call the election. Nobody is preventing you from getting to work. You were at work before, were you not?

A less deluded person might have mused that maybe the mood in the country should be taken into account. But no, somehow the votes cast last night are irrelevant. The only thing that appears to matter is the votes cast in the referendum a year ago. Those votes are sacrosanct. The wishes of the electors now are not.

And politicians wonder why they are often regarded with contempt.

Election 2017: The Fickleness of Fate

After the election nobody wanted, the result that nobody expected. The nation rejected "strong and stable" Theresa May, snubbed "Another Independence vote, mebbe" Nicola Sturgeon, gave a resounding two fingers to UKIP and hesitantly moved a little toward the distinctly non-strident Labour and its hitherto much-derided leader Jeremy Corbyn.

May's gamble - calling a snap election to achieve a strong majority in the House of Commons - has failed. The Tories have lost 12 seats overall, despite some significant gains in Scotland (up 12 seats). There should have been a swing to the Tories against both UKIP and Labour, based on their incumbency and the presidential nature of May's campaign. But packing the cabinet with Brexiteers who projected a "We won the referendum so we can do anything we like" attitude has backfired badly.

The results in Scotland, where both Labour and LibDems recovered seats swept up by the SNP last time, makes the overall picture harder to interpret but it does seem to fair to suggest that voters are split 50:50 between broad right and broad left in England & Wales and more tilted to the broad left (including SNP) in Scotland. This strengthens the hand of the Remainer /Soft Brexiteers. However, with Brexit negotiations due to start in 10 days and a weak government about to be take shape (minority Tory propped up by the DUP according to this morning's news reports), the UK is in a febrile state. Will this make the outcome worse, with the government unable to make any compromises and unable to make any deals for fear of plunging itself into turmoil?

Just as in those dramatic days in 2010, we now face a period of intense horse-trading, bluffs, personality clashes and individual bids for power. Will a tired and undoubtedly shaken Mrs May (no matter what she might attempt to portray in public) have the strength to see it through? We will find out very soon.

London Bridge and the Election

Mrs Commuter and I escaped the election for a blissful week of cruising down the Rhine and into the Main, visiting several spectacular medieval towns in the "Franconia" region of Bavaria. Alas, we could not escape the terrible news of another terrorist attack on London; in a copycat of the Westminster Bridge attack, a group of lunatics attacked people near Borough market and killed eight before the police got them.

The pressure on politicians to make instant reactions is overwhelming. Today it seems that the Conservatives would like to ditch some of the human rights laws and have longer prison sentences; their inability to understand that the attackers do not care about prison is deeply worrying. This is the same party that is proposing to cut the budget allocated to the police.

On our return we found another A4 flyer from the Green party, a leaflet from the LibDems (who continue to make Brexit the key issue) and no less than two colourful leaflets featuring Brexit betrayer B. Johnson. His slogan "standing with Theresa May" may well send shivers down the spine of the PM when she reflects on how he supported his dear and faithful friend Dave.

The election is tomorrow and we shall be glad to be shot of it, to be honest [I thought we were always honest: Ed]. How this country negotiates a new future with the EU remains the single most important political choice and I don't have the slightest idea what the options are, not least because so much depends on the other 27 member states who are themselves considering their positions. This country will presumably opt for "strong and stable" (and she never panics, at least not too much, well,okay a bit, well, quite a lot really but no worse than anyone else would) Mrs May in the same way that Germans have put their trust in "mutti" [Angela Merkel:Ed]. Labour will have another bitter period of in-fighting and I look forward to UKIP splitting into "Continuity", "Real" and "Original" factions who can spend the next five years denouncing each other.

Or will Jeremy Corbyn confound the polls (and this columnist) by winning?

 Anyway, returning to the holidays theme with which I started, it's been a long time since I put up a tram photo. Here is one in Wurzburg where an inattentive tourist is about to get a nasty shock (it's ok, she was not struck)

Election 2017: 4 - After the bomb

Out on the campaign trail the Manchester bombing is forcing a change of agendas. Jeremy Corbyn's speech suggesting that British involvement in foreign wars makes us a target of terrorism is both superficially true and yet entirely misses the point. The UK would be a target anyway because we have a free media which will report all such actions, giving the terrorists the publicity they are desperate to have. Our values are fundamentally opposed to theirs, especially on the equal treatment of women and men, freedom of religion and the creation of laws and Government through democratic participation. This is why terrorist attacks are indiscriminate and why they will have no significant effect - everyone who lives in this country is potentially a target and therefore everyone, bar the deranged, will continue to defy them.

On a different note, a single sheet of paper from the Green party informs me austerity will be ended, all cuts reversed and loads of money will be available for everything, apart from HS2. This last promise has a genuine local appeal although the accompanying illustration - of Frays Fields in Uxbridge - may or may not represent an area under threat if the proposal to put the railway in a tunnel up to the Colne goes ahead.

As with the Labour leaflet received yesterday, there is nothing to make me sympathetic to the candidate himself because it doesn't tell me why he wishes to become an MP.

Election 2017: 3 - Labour strikes first

The title of this piece may be a trifle misleading. It merely refers to the arrival of the first electioneering flyer. Vincent Lo has invited our support in exchange for a few bland promises that everything will be all right. The leader of the party, Mr Corbyn, is not mentioned or pictured. Mr Lo himself, though pictured several times, keeps a very low profile [Oh dear: Ed]. I have no idea of his background, interests or even if he lives in the constituency. There is barely a mention of Brexit and nothing to explain how Labour would, in Mr Lo's words "give the NHS the money it needs". The assertion that real wages have fallen by 10% since 2007 and that this can be remedied by raising the minimum wage does not appear to address the position of the huge number of people who earn more than that but nonetheless are finding things hard going.

Labour has no chance of winning here. The Tories got 50% of the vote last time and have a very high profile candidate in the shape of the Foreign Secretary, Mr Johnson, perhaps the only British politician in recent history whose appointment to high office caused titters in diplomatic circles all round the world. Whether he will continue to hold office in a few weeks remains to be seen but it is certain that Vincent will not come anywhere near him when the votes are cast. Still, he can always go back to being a bit-part player in Shakespeare:

"Lo, what light from yonder window breaks?"
"Well, I didn't see anything."  

Election 2017: 2 - The Big Yawn

General elections used to be fairly exciting. The parties would present their proposals and leading politicians would battle it out over their ideas and suitability for office. Results could be hard to predict and votes mattered (at least in a number of marginal seats).

This year it seems flat and pointless. The lead between the Conservatives and all other parties is, in electoral terms, huge. In terms of the popular vote it is not - they are on about 38% - but the quirks of the British system means that this guarantees a significant majority in the House of Commons and if a majority of UK voters do not actually support them - well, tough cheese because elections here are not about winning national majorities but simply getting more votes than any one else, constituency by constituency.

Furthermore, the national agenda has been suborned by Brexit. It is like the anti-communist era of 1950s USA. If you voice any disquiets about the rush to leave the EU and cut all ties (the mantra "No deal is better than a bad deal" is how we are being softened up for this) then you may be branded at best a moaner, an anti-democrat and at worst a traitor. Just about any political policy can be framed in terms of whether it agrees with what voters are supposed to have voted for when they chose Brexit, albeit that the referendum did not ask anything whatsoever about policies, only about whether the UK should continue to be a member.

It is a pleasure to be able to record that the French public, in the Presidential election last Sunday, chose by 2 to 1 to put in a pro-European centrist.  Only 21 miles away from us¹ but so very different in outlook. Mind you, something similar could be said about the Scots.

The Conservatives are running on "Strong and Stable" government. I am not terribly clear what the key slogans of any of the other parties are (mainly because I can't be that bothered to find out)². It is a little curious that the British are being invited to re-elect the ruling party to make it stronger, rather than be told they will be better off, or that the nasty foreigners will be kept well away³ . It seems to be having to do with facing down those ghastly Europeans and ensuring that no deal whatsoever is done over anything, because that will really jolly well show them and make them sorry they ever forced us into leaving in the first place, or something. I am still wondering what will happen when the first planeloads of British pensioners, kicked out of Spain at a moment's notice, touch down at Gatwick and they all demand access to the NHS and housing.

Footnotes 
¹ From Dover, I mean. Not from beautiful Ruislip.
² If any election material ever arrives I suppose I might be able to issue an update on this one.
³ Of course this does not apply to dear old Rupert Murdoch and his perpeptual attempts to buy up British broadcasting. Or any rich person who wants to buy up any property they can get their hands on and hide the ownership in a trust based in a country with no extradition treaty with the UK and total commercial secrecy.  Or any offshore trust that wants to do a dodgy deal with a Labour council in London to steal the ground from a much-loved local football club in order to make profits for themselves and their mates back in the Town Hall.

Election 2017: The one we did not see coming

The Prime Minister, Theresa May, had an announcement to make before the press in Downing Street earlier this week. Nobody knew what was intended. Her decision to ask for a dissolution of Parliament and to hold a General Election in early June was a genuine surprise.

This is an election that feels wrong. The Parliament of 2015 is sufficiently fresh to be representative; the one-off Referendum on EU membership notwithstanding. May seems to be determined to remake the Conservative Party in her own image rather than to care much about what is right for the country.

I suppose I had better keep an eye on things though I have an uneasy feeling that after all the soundbites, the pointless TV coverage of politicians visiting factories and shops, schools and hospitals, the sloganising and the desperate search by the media for the story of the day, we will be left with a Parliament pretty similar to the one we have now.

We do know that it will no longer be graced by George Osborne, one-time Chancellor, who is retiring (for the moment) nor by one N. Farage, who has decided not to undergo the humiliation of another trouncing at the polls and is not going to stand. And that is about all we do know at present.