Now that the dust has started to settle after the election, we are waking up to a strange reality indeed.
The Prime Minister opportunistically called the general election to “strengthen her hand” in Brexit negotiations. She did so when the Conservatives seemingly enjoyed a massive advantage in the opinion polls.
She then presided over the worst election campaign in living memory, full of hubris, shambolic u-turns and mud-slinging. In the simplest of terms, it ran on the message: “I, Theresa May”. But the monotonous “Strong and Stable” mantra did not work. As the campaign progressed we increasingly saw her for what she was – wooden, arrogant, shy of policy debate and unwilling to meet real people.
In contrast, Labour Party’s message was positive and focused on a bold vision of a fairer, better Britain set in our manifesto. Jeremy Corbyn was at his best, connecting with people, campaigning on policy issues and not engaging in personal attacks.
As the results started coming last Thursday night, it was gradually becoming obvious whose campaign worked better. With the final results declared, the Conservatives ended up with a net loss of 13 seats and no overall majority in the House of Commons. Labour might not have won the election but has not lost it either. We have ended up with 32 more MPs and we increased our share of the vote by a massive 9.5%.
Theresa May’s gamble has backfired. The Conservatives are now as far from providing a “strong and stable” leadership as they could possibly be. It is now looking increasingly week and wobbly.
Any party leader with dignity would have stepped down having inflicted such harm on her country and her own party. But not her! She has again shown herself to be inflexible, aloof and patronising in her inability to acknowledge the message from the electorate.
Her hollow “strong and stable” soundbite has now been replaced with yet another platitude of “certainty”. This “certainty” delivered by her government, propped up by, to use her own words – an “alliance of chaos” with the DUP, will prove to be nothing of the sort. The DUP, a reactionary party with both its feet firmly in the last century, stands against LGBT rights, supports a near total abortion ban and actively denies climate change.
Ironically for the Conservative PR machine, DUP is a party that still has a number of questions to answer regarding their links to the UDA and the UFF. And it is on the back of this grim alliance that she will still command a wafer thin majority of just two!
This is the current picture of our political scene just a week before the commencement of Brexit negotiations. How on earth can this government deliver a good Brexit deal for our country? How can we trust them to deliver a Britain that works for all and not just for the privileged few?
Instead, we can expect a continued chaotic approach to negotiations with the EU, as she is held hostage by both the hard Brexit/UKIP wing of her wounded party and the DUP with its unconditional demand for a porous Irish border. She will also need to contend with the Europhile faction in her party, as well as those repulsed by the DUPs socially regressive attitudes.
Amidst all these internal Tory distractions and witch-hunts, what we can be sure of, however, is yet more austerity, accompanied by continued ideological cuts to public spending.
For all of us this will translate into a further rolling back of public service provision, falling living standards, a privatisation of the NHS by stealth, crumbling social care and more selective education for those lucky enough to live in the right postcodes or with the necessary financial means to ensure the inheritance of educational privilege for their offspring by the way of private tuition.
Or will we see another election soon?
Voyteck S Kowalewski
Chair of The Constituency Labour Party
South Holland and the Deepings
