“You’re joking? Not another one! There’s too much politics going on… why does she need to do it?”
On 18th April, Brenda from Bristol managed to capture the mood of a nation. Brenda, already well on her way to becoming the Gillian Duffy of 2017, had just been told Prime Minister May had called a snap general election. She was not happy about it.
In the following few weeks it’s been hard to find many happy people. There are those die-hard politicos who had been gleefully predicting this ever since May’s bloodless ascendancy. There are also the 600+ MPs who obediently voted for their own unemployment, causing a spate of cartoons featuring turkeys and Christmas, and demonstrating the fatal flaw in the Fixed Term Parliament Act: nobody enjoys an election campaign more than those at the centre of it.
Outside of the Westminster bubble however the reaction has been lacklustre at best. I consider myself pretty politically engaged. I care deeply about the decisions that are made about the future of our country. I was apoplectic last summer with the decision to leave the EU (as demonstrated here and here and here). I spend hours each week listening to or reading about politics. I know the name of my MP. I even know the names of some of the shadow cabinet, not easy to do in the shadowiest shadow cabinet in recent memory.
Despite all of this I’ve really struggled. I want to care and I know it is important. All elections are important. The responsibility to participate in the democratic process is never something that should be taken lightly. I want to be pounding the streets with placard in hand and pointing in the direction of a progressive future. But frankly I’m exhausted and I don’t know the way.
Since 2014 there has been a seemingly endless string of major votes: the Scottish Independence Referendum, the 2015 General Election, the London Mayoral Election, the EU Referendum, the US Presidential Election, the French Presidential Election, and now the 2017 General Election. Not all of these are votes that I have been able to cast my ballot in; but all have played heavily on my mind or featured heavily in our fractured political discourse. Of the ones I have taken part in Sadiq Khan’s victory is the only one that I’ve “won”. I can’t help but feel some of Brenda’s pain.
Having said all of that the UK will be going to the polls (again) tomorrow and before that happens I thought I’d reflect briefly on how the campaign has unfolded and what might happen next.
It’s Brexit, stupid
When Theresa May stood outside Downing Street, to confirm that she likes nothing more than changing her mind, it was leaving the EU that she used as her excuse. She felt it was incumbent on her to win a “mandate” from the British people before entered into formal negotiations.
There was some sense in this. After all nobody had voted for her to be Prime Minister. She got that job by not being Andrea Leadsom — hardly a ringing endorsement. She hadn’t even campaigned to leave. Any vestige of the Conservative government that had won the popular vote was swept away within minutes of her being installed as leader. Perhaps this was her chance to lay out to the British a persuasive, positive case for how life outside the European Union could benefit the widest possible slice of our society. Perhaps we’d get to have the reasoned, open debate so sorely lacking from the referendum campaign.
Sadly not. After all, Brexit means Brexit. For anyone who doesn’t like tautologies they were referred back to the splendidly vacuous White Paper (which I tried to understand here)
The more telling element of that speech was her railing against those with the temerity to disagree with her approach. Apparently it was impossible to get what she wanted done. Impossible in the face of master-opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn, nine Lib Dems, and some uppity Scots. There are two obviously problems with this. One, this rag-tag bunch is perhaps the easiest opposition that any PM has faced since at least 1997; even then the leader of the opposition was the undeniably excellent William Hague. Two, opposing is in the job description. Holding the Government to account, making them justify, and modify, positions is the whole ball game. That’s how this pesky democracy thing we’ve got going on works.
As Daily Mail said, with characteristic hyperbole, the real point here was to “Crush the Saboteurs”. Hardly the spirit of collaboration in the national interest…
It’s not just Brexit, stupid
If Brexit, rather than some tantalising polling numbers about Jeremy Corbyn being less popular than rain-soaked bank holidays, was the real reason for calling the election then the focus on that one issue didn’t last very long. I think there are three reasons why.
Elections aren’t referendums, and it therefore it is never possible to tell the population what it is that you are supposed to be voting based on. Even when some gargantuan constitutional crisis looms those pesky voters insist on caring about things like how much they get paid and where their kids can go school. Each party published a broad manifesto of promises — some more far flung than others.
Elections aren’t about presidents, which makes it difficult to frame things as a choice between individuals. The Conservatives appear to have gone into this whole gig on the assumption that people would combust at the mention of Corbyn’s name and trip over themselves to ensure the sensible adult was in charge. But of course elections are fought at a local and national level, constituted of thousands of conversations and a web of decisions about how we, the people, wanted to be represented. Making something a cult of personality can cut both ways (see below)
Events, dear boy, events, as Howard McMillian famously didn’t say, change everything. In this case those events have been violently disruptive. The long-dreaded re-emergence of jihadist terror attacks in first Manchester and then London put into perspective some of the more petty squabbles. But it also shone a unblinking light on the role of the police and security services, how funding decisions have affected their ability to do that job, and the legislation needed to frame that job. When the presumptive-PM has been Home Secretary for six years it makes a break from the past quite hard to sell.
These three elements have combined to ensure that the initial intent — make this vote a coronation of May and her version of Brexit — look like a distant memory. But does that mean she’s lost?
Is May over?
Yes in the sense that it is now June. In every other sense no. The question was never really would the Conservatives win but by how much. The are the only right wing party (UKIP’s 3 million or so votes from 2015 are likely to migrate to them en masse) and they parts of the population who are pre-disposed to vote Conservative are much better at turning up. But the campaign has done everything it can to undermine that outcome.
The very certainty of the outcome has instilled an distastefully dismissive arrogance into proceedings. May has refused to engage with the electorate in a meaningful way. She seems extraordinarily uncomfortable with doing anything other than repeating soundbites. Her manifesto is a confusing mix of core Conservative values, some classic Milibandism, and a genuinely progressive social care proposal that her voter base unsurprisingly loathes. The manifesto copy and pastes promises from previous incarnations, despite them having come nowhere close to being achieved. None of it is costed. The hypocrisy of not bothering to do any sums whilst railing against Labour’s innumeracy at every given turn is mind blowing.
The net result of this has not been not been pretty for May and her chief cheerleaders. They’ve been forced to change tack more than once, doing nothing to reinforce the message of being either strong or stable. The luxury of a healthy poll lead has bred lazy thinking. It has, inadvertently, proven the need for the very thing May finds distasteful — a functional opposition.
If this was supposed to be a demonstration of May’s public audition as the one we could all trust to chart the complex path of the EU negotiation then it’s been an abject failure.
Is it the end of Labour?
If there was one thing that commentators were completely sure of it was that Labour was going to get pummelled. Corbyn, was by common consent, so far out of his depth that he would oversee the final demise of the party of McDonald, Hardie, Attlee, Bevan, Benn, Wilson, Kinnock, Blair and Brown. The grand deal between the working class and the professional liberal intelligentsia that had lasted 100 years was broken beyond repair.
That might still be true but it is looking less likely. Admittedly Corbyn has benefited from expectations that were so low that every time he didn’t embarrass himself it was treated as a victory. Clearly something has gone right or the attack dogs at the media department of the Tory party wouldn’t have run 13 pages of fear-mongering propaganda this morning.
I’m no Corbynista. Far from it. I even voted for Owen Smith — which is a pretty desperate act in anyone’s book. I’ve never disliked him as an individual but I’ve also never supported him as a leader. Those qualities that make him an excellent rebel do not seem to make him an effective convener of talents or talisman for a broad church. His leadership has been a period of marked inaction in which an increasingly large number of talented MPs have retreated from front line politics.
He also has very questionable taste in friends. Neither of his key lieutenants (John McDonnell and Diane Abbott) have done much to inspire the nation that they are sensible options to occupy the great offices of state [noting that Diane Abbott’s below-par performance may have been a lot more to do with her ill-health that was previously acknowledged].
Corbyn is not a perfect leader of the opposition and a less than a disastrous showing in the last 6 weeks is not enough to suddenly start shouting from the rooftops. But he is not Theresa May and that has proven to be more of an asset than expected. The common belief that he is unelectable seems less cut and dry than it did before. But that doesn’t mean he is about the be elected.
What next?
Concrete predictions are a mugs game. All I can say with certainty is that I’ll be voting for Catherine West, Labour MP for Hornsey and Wood Green. I’d be happy to see the country return a substantial number of Labour MPs, but I’ll also be very pleased to see more Lib Dems in the Chamber and I’d be delighted if the Greens manage to secure Bristol West.
Having said prediction are for mugs I can’t see a reality in which the Tories don’t get a majority of seats. I think (I hope) chances of a massive majority have evaporated. May’s position as a negotiator is definitely no stronger than it was before she changed her mind on this whole sorry ordeal.
Back in April my hope was that the long-term effect would be to bring forward our next progressive government to 2022 rather than 2025. That might not seem like much of a goal but I think it might still be achievable. Whatever the outcome I would be happiest to see the left of centre parties unite behind a progressive agenda and provide a genuine alternative for the millions who feel utterly unrepresented by a right-wing Conservative government.
There is no glory in coming second in British politics. However badly Theresa May and her coterie have been at running this campaign they are still going to be in charge. The are still going to pursue a divisive strategy for Brexit and run our public services into the ground. They are going to do it for five years. As Gordon Brown was fond of saying one day of Government is better than 5,000 days of opposition.
On a more personal note, I’ve also decided, having reached exhaustion point with electioneering, I’m going to stop writing about Brexit and tribulations of party politics. Instead I’d like to read more, write reviews, and spend my time thinking about big issues that have played a disappointingly small part in this election campaign. I haven’t come up with any answers yet but I think there are interesting questions to be asked. This might include:
How do we reconnect urban and rural communities?
Is the city the most important political body in a globalised world?
Should we all get a basic income?
Why don’t people under 25 vote very much?
What does a refugee system that actually works look like?
How can economic development and sustainability co-exist?
Does international aid work or is it just colonial guilt?
How many houses is enough house?
What is the point of billionaires?
I’m sure there will be other things and I’d love to hear ideas.
