We’re sleepwalking towards a majority Tory government, led by Boris Johnson, aren’t we? Labour has, so far, failed to make a dent in the Tory bandwagon and, among with much of the media, has failed to call out Johnson’s consistent lying. These are dark times indeed.
I have found the election campaign literally depressing. I know that my vote will make zero difference on the day itself, and my blog even less than zero in the week ahead, but I have to say fulfilling my democratic obligation – I have already voted by post – made me feel genuinely sick.
If Johnson’s horrible right wing Tories lie for a living, then Jeremy Corbyn’s bumbling and ineffectual ‘leadership’, with added anti-Semitism, has made this a horrible place to be. At the start of the campaign, I resolved to vote Lib Dem. As the weeks went by, there was no point.
Much as I like Jo Swinson, as a political operator, which I am afraid matters a great deal these days, she is not up to the job of seriously challenging the big parties. That is not to say that she is rubbish and that Johnson and Corbyn are brilliant. They are the opposite of brilliant. But Swinson made two major missteps.
Firstly, she argued that the Lib Dems would revoke article 50 and halt Brexit without even asking the people. That was naive and misjudged. Much as we know that Brexit will be bad for Britain, and that people were consistently lied to before the 2016 referendum, we have to accept the result stands. The only way to reverse Brexit would be another public vote and I am still not convinced it is the right thing to do. My opinion has changed only slightly, in that I believe the campaign to rejoin the EU begins the moment we leave it. I am still in favour of the softest possible Brexit; Norway + on steroids.
The second blunder by Swinson was to not acknowledge at the outset their part in David Cameron’s austerity-heavy government and how they allowed, even enabled, the Bedroom Tax, attacks on the sick and disabled and real cuts to benefits. And going back on the Lib Dem promise to abolish university tuition fees by announcing they would be tripled. That alone did much to destroy trust in politicians. Swinson did say sorry, which is more than some Lib Dem candidates have done, but it was too little and too late. Her comment that this stuff happened nearly a decade ago was just plain silly. The Libs Dems apologised way too late and were not sufficiently contrite or regretful. Which meant there was a terrible choice to be made: a hard right Conservative Party and a hard left Labour Party. I confess that, after all my protestations, I was persuaded – bludgeoned indeed by some people, including a former MP! – I put my X in the latter’s box. It has made me feel ashamed and dirty.
If I am going to urge people to vote tactically, I could hardly not do so myself. My MP, a slow-witted dullard called Giacomo ‘Jack’ Lopresti, is from the hard right of the Conservative Party. I was told that the Labour candidate, whose name I have forgotten, was a sensible left of centre person. There was my dilemma: vote for a good, mainstream Labour MP and help put Corbyn into Downing Street. Having been persuaded by family and friends, and by the evidence of my own eyes and ears, there is no chance of Corbyn becoming prime minister but there is every chance of Johnson keeping the job, I did the dirty deed.
After all I have said about Corbyn, the friend of the despot and terrorist, leading a party swimming in a sea of Jew hatred, a shadow cabinet full of halfwits and numpties; and I voted for him. I was weak, acting against my emotions and principles, placing the need to ensure the Tories do not get a parliamentary majority above it all. Mr Inconsistency, that’s me.
When this election is over, with Johnson safely ensconced in Number 10, there will be one opportunity for mainstream socialists and social democrats to take back control of Labour. Any defeat will have to be owned by Corbyn and the people who put him there, including his third rate allies and his well-paid advisers who are presiding over an electoral disaster for both the party and the people of Britain. If the battle for Labour is lost, then the party will be gone forever and it cannot be saved. A new party will need to evolve quickly from the wreckage.
If Corbyn and his fans must own the coming defeat, then Johnson will have to own ‘victory’ and the chaos that will follow in the years and perhaps decades to come. Far from ‘getting Brexit done’, a Johnson victory will ensure Brexit, and its long, dark hangover, will infect the country for both the foreseeable and unforeseeable future. This is just the start, not the end. Corbyn and the hard left could not defeat Johnson. It will be time for real change after 12th December.
