Tag: Tories

#GE2017: Experts puzzled by ‘first party’ effect

Rich Will2 Comments

YQoXTr6.pngThe last few years have seen huge shifts in world politics, with some established parties (the French Parti Socialiste, PASOK in Greece) more or less disappearing overnight and new contenders coming into play as the voting public tire of the same old establishment names and faces. In the upcoming UK General Election even seasoned observers have been astonished to witness the seemingly unstoppable rise in the polls of a brand-new political force. The party is known as the Conservative Party, and is led by Theresa May, which also happens to be the name (and the person) of the current Prime Minister.

Throughout the country people disillusioned with years of austerity, with cuts to public services devastating areas already reeling from deindustrialisation and underinvestment, are preparing to deliver a huge blow to the government, by voting for it.

“I’m particularly angry about what’s been done in my area to local schools”, says John Blobb from Exeter. “It’s almost impossible to find a place for my child, and it’s all due to the mess successive Conservative ministers have made of the education system. Plus in this next Parliament, if the Tories get a clear majority, it’ll be the final solution for the NHS, full-on privatisation. It’s terrifying. And I cannot f*cking stand the way that woman speaks. She’s like this horrendous mix of cruelty and insincerity, and it all comes out in that truly awful, unbearable voice of hers. That’s why I’m definitely going to vote Conservative”.

Amanda Mardy, from Sunderland, is voting Conservative “because I’ve been sanctioned four times by the jobcentre, and twice it was only because the public transport is so bad I couldn’t get to my appointment on time. I’ve barely got enough food to last me til the weekend, then that’s it. I’ll have to beg, or punch a policeman just so I can get a bed and some food. I think my case proves conclusively that Theresa May is doing an excellent job”.

Sunjit Sahil, from Manchester, is horrified by the level and tone of racist abuse he and members of his family have suffered over the last few months. “I blame the Government for stoking up division in the wake of Brexit. It’s a classic case of divide-and-rule. My nephew was actually called a ‘paki’, by a bus driver, in 2017 for god’s sake! I’m scared about what kind of environment my kids will have to grow up in. I’ll definitely be voting for the Conservative Party to express how angry I am at the Conservative Government.”

Jimmy Chonk is a lifelong animal rights activist who spends his weekends trying to sabotage fox hunts in Berkshire. He’ll be voting Conservative “because someone has to do something to protect foxes”. He also says that the Government’s treatment of child refugees and its “horrifying complacency” with regard to Climate Change has “disgusted” him to the point where he’s “definitely” going to vote for it.

Sandra Scallop of Portmerion was inspired to vote Conservative by the Ken Loach film ‘I, Daniel Blake’. “When I saw that film I was in floods of tears. Just the thought that in this day and age so many people are treated in such a callous way, and it’s getting worse. Thinking about it now makes me so angry I feel physically sick, any one of us could have an accident or get ill and end up in such a situation. People like Theresa May can afford expensive private insurance, they don’t have to worry about such things and they simply do not care about the fate of ordinary people, they’ve probably all got shares in companies which profit from people’s misfortune! And don’t get me started on bloody fracking! In five years’ time we’re probably going to be living in a permanent bloody earthquake zone, with fire pouring out of the kitchen taps. I don’t know the name of my local Conservative MP, but I’m definitely going to vote for him or her”.

Seasoned psephologists are struggling to explain the phenomenon. “We’re used to seeing a third-party protest vote, particularly in by-elections.”, says James Lee Curtice of Essex University. “It’s common to vote out of anger against the Government. This is the first time in my career that I’ve seen what we might call a ‘first party effect’. There is some evidence that the British electorate are responding to what we call the ‘man with beard’ effect in reaction to Jeremy Corbyn. There’s also a very strong chance that large sections of the British electorate are absolute fucking idiots. We really, definitely can’t rule that last possibility out.”

“Vote Conservative”, he added.

 

Are the Tories throwing the election to escape responsibility for Brexit? No, but…

Rich Will1 Comment

aw-theresa-may-jeremy-corbyn-poll

As I’ve argued all along would be the case, an orderly Brexit is turning out to be impossible. The early stages of negotiations have been like trying to make an omelette using shit instead of eggs. It was never going to be anything like a ‘clean divorce’ – that metaphor is just as unhelpful and misleading as Thatcher’s comparison of a national economy to that of a household. Instead the UK wants to unilaterally break a contract with 27 partners and define some sort of mutually beneficial relationship afterwards in the face of a politically justifiable desire from other partners to eliminate any possible benefit.

It may not be clear from reading the domestic press, but the UK Govt is currently undergoing galaxy-wide humiliation at its lack of preparedness, its self-delusion and its misplaced arrogance. Foreign news outlets tend to report what people like Juncker have actually said, not some self-serving distortion of it. The Tories and their pet bulldog newspapers can snarl emptily about sabotage and bluff and bluster about being ganged up on but the fact that May et al do not know what they are doing is now public knowledge from Torino to Timbuktu. There are probably peasants in the North Korean countryside having a good laugh at May’s plight over their breakfast of grass and bits of their house as they try to find light relief from thoughts of impending nuclear annihilation, not to mention spladgequards from planet Beetlewoox 4 scratching whatever they have for heads and wondering why this particular species of human known as The British insists on behaving in such a hostile manner towards its nearest neighbours.

At the same time, Corbyn’s Labour Party is rising slightly in the polls (not that much – it’s rather like someone you were sure was dead moving an eyelid slightly). Would Corbyn be better placed if this somewhow was to become known as the Lazurus election? That would place him in the not-exactly-to-be-coveted position of having to negotiate in the national interest for something which is against the national interest. After all, even the most ardent Brexiteers did this primarily for their own ideological jollification. Instead, the likeliest scenario is that following a probably slightly less emphatic Tory victory than we had feared, the UK will call off talks and resort to extreme hostilities as the economy collapses and the country quite possibly prepares North Korea-style for a war which may or may not ever arrive. If the whole thing wasn’t so depressing I would bet good money on some form of conscription being introduced before Article 50 expires. That’s the sort of thing merchants of chaos like Farage wanted all along and Cameron was prepared to risk for the sake of short-term political expediency.

The Tories are, of course, not about to throw the election. They want to achieve their long-standing ambition of crushing the godawful upstart Plebs Party for good*. The polls may well be misleading – Michael Ashcroft certainly made sure they were in 2015. But they must be having very serious qualms about the trap that they’re backing themselves into. The Tories have been able to get away with austerity by blaming everything that’s wrong in society on the previous Labour Government. No opposition means fewer scapegoats at a time when they need them like never before. This is not a good time to turn the country into a one-party state.

* It may be due to missing the irony in this sentence that some idiot on the Labour Party forum (possibly a troll) said that this article ‘reads like Tory Party propaganda’. This may mark an all-time high in terms how inane political debate on social media can go, I’ll keep you posted.