I have followed politics moderately closely for about 40 years now. In that time I have absorbed a lot of information and spent a great deal of time. I now discover that despite all that effort I don’t really have a clue about it. None of my predictions of what was likely to happen politically have remotely come to pass. I did manage to place a bet on the result of the last election and to lose it. But I laid it off with another bet that recouped my stake. So that is about how much I know - enough to be able to work out a backup plan.
And so it continues. One thing I thought was an absolute certainty was that this election campaign would be about Brexit. It is clear enough that Brexit was the major consideration in calling it. The Prime Minister, quite sensibly, realised that she is going to run into problems during the negotiations. And given that her party was in a strong position and her opponents weak, getting a new mandate that meant that the whole Brexit process from beginning to end could be done without an election having to be called in the middle made a lot of sense.
And yet somehow despite all this, the subject has hardly figured. I hope that I am not the only person who is surprised by it. But on reflection it makes sense. Once you accept that the referendum result has to be implemented, which was obvious to me from day one and I think to everyone by day two, then there isn’t really much else to say about it until we get deep into the nitty gritty of the negotiations. So basically, the biggest political event in the country’s history since the last world war is off the agenda.
That doesn’t mean that the events of the election are unimportant. Again, things are turning out completely differently to how I expected. The Lib Dems are not getting the Brexit boost from remainers I thought they would. If anything they are going backwards - a direction whose possibilities I had imagined wrongly that they had already fully exploited. Labour is not doing anywhere near as badly as the infighting of the last two years led me to believe. Apart from Diane Abbot, who I think must be suffering from some kind of illness, the spokesmen have done a good job. Their manifesto has gone down pretty well. They still look like they will take a pasting in terms of lost seats. But they now look certain to come out of the election as the only effective opposition to the Conservatives. And their new left wing flavour is not only proving popular, it is even influencing the Tories who have picked up a few policies and a lot of rhetoric from them. But still more importantly, it looks like the left will unite behind the Labour Party by and large.
So as I write, the prognosis seems to be a five year term with Mrs May in charge. There is simply no way Brexit can be delivered without upsetting some of its existing supporters, so there is a good chance the right will fragment to some degree. How that happens I can’t predict. A rejuvenated UKIP is possible, or a split in the Conservative Party maybe. Or a right leaning version of Macron might emerge to challenge on a pro-European platform. (George Osbourne and Nick Clegg maybe?)
Taking Tory vote share back over the 40% mark for the first time since the nineties ought to have ensured Mrs May a comfortable command of her party. If the haul of new seats isn’t as big as her party was expecting, they might start looking for a fresh face. I can’t help wondering also if she has made one fatal error. Her blatant lie that she wasn’t going to call an election might come back to haunt her. The Lib Dem’s tuition fees embarrassment took a while to sink into public consciousness. Perhaps once the voting is out of the way, the mismatch between what she said and what she did might be something that starts to drag down her popularity. There is no telling with these things, but if the election turns out to be something of a damp squib with only a handful of seats changing hands perhaps it will begin to tell. Her brand offering is basically honesty and competence. Telling a porkie about an election that turns out to have been a mistake might hit both of those.
Whatever, while this election looks like a foregone win for the Conservatives the next one looks wide open for Labour. Corbyn has already turned out to be less of a liability than was supposed. You can’t beat being a good loser for becoming a national treasure. If he stands down in favour of somebody more charismatic, he could well turn into a benign elder statesman who helps his party win over votes in places they would never have got them otherwise.
So in 2022 we could be looking at the historic fourth Labour landslide. The question is, will reversing Brexit be in the manifesto?
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