Setting out to appeal to bewildered Labour voters and UKIP orphans, Theresa May created a sub-Churchillian atmosphere of Us Against Them, claiming she could secure a better Brexit deal if she had a massive majority in government.
What a load of tosh. May knows well that when her team face up to negotiations with the EU, the size of her parliamentary majority will not make the slightest difference.
When Alexis Tsipras arrived in Brussels after Syriza’s massive landslide victory, Wolfgang Schäuble bluntly rebuffed his mandate thus:
“It’s yours against mine.”
There will be 27 other mandates on that table, and in the EU, an entity perfectly designed to give heretic governments the runaround; to obfuscate and confuse.
Rather than spoil her campaign with that inconvenient truth, May prefers to win over a certain Brit voter who doesn’t mind a bit of argy bargy with Johnny Foreigner.
That voter longs for England to control its borders. May looks the type who’ll close the doors, yet here lies more deceit.
It is an accepted truth that a thriving Western economy needs a broad base of migrant workers.
Those who constantly complain that immigrants steal English jobs will not be eagerly racing off their sofas to fill vacancies created by Europeans departing base and messy industries.
Work for those hours, at that rate of pay?
Are you kidding? Who do you think I am, mate?
Britain needs immigrants, and without free movement from the EU, the UK will have to open its doors to people from all over the world, doubtless with many more skin types than the EU offered.
Not sure those refugees from UKIP voting Tory this time round will like that so much.
You can’t blame May for calling the election. If I’d been elected leader of my party and in the process become Prime Minster, I’d be overjoyed to see my opposition in the throes of civil war.
Had May simply said that as her opposition was in tatters, she’d decided it’d be pretty silly not to go for a General Election, I would admire her.
Had she said:
“I is doin’ it now, ‘cos they over there is totes rubbish!” I might even have voted for her.
Unfortunately in this particular Game of Thrones there’s room only for conceit and deceit.
May’s mantra of ‘strong and stable government’ was a conceit. What is strong about a government that fails to balance its books for 15 years; that by 2020 will have borrowed more than all previous Labour governments combined?
What is strong about an economy that needs to cut the triple lock on pensions; that abolishes free school lunches; that sees wages shrinking against prices for the first time in decades?
The Tories have been in power for 7 years.
When will strong actually mean strong?
What is stable about saying you won’t call an election and then calling an election? What is stable about denying Scotland the right to another referendum, because that would destabilise the Brexit process, and then calling an election to stabilise the Brexit process?
Jeremy Corbyn is not free from deceit. As leader of the Labour Party he turned his back on his own beliefs and campaigned to Remain, when a man of true principle might have stepped down.
After backtracking on Trident, Corbyn started to look suspiciously like every other politician, until he redeemed himself, first by saying that this election was less about Brexit, and more about what kind of country UK voters prefer to live in, and then bravely declaring the War on Terror a failure.
He implied what others dare not say, even though we all know it to be true: if you bomb people in their homes, they will bomb you in yours.
Alone in suggesting policies that might alleviate this horrific revenge cycle of terrorism and war, Corbyn wants to review UK foreign policy, in order to make the streets of home safer places.
This of course left Corbyn open to a barrage of abuse from Boris Johnson and crew, rushing to misquote and malign the Labour leader, claiming he’d said those victims deserved to die.
A nasty little election it is, indeed.
Lurking behind the conceits and deceits of our electoral processes lies a new and dangerous subterfuge.
It was not a shock when news broke last week that the
Conservatives had been bombarding voters in marginal constituencies with ads and messages from fake Facebook accounts.
Through his business Renaissance Technologies, Right Wing billionaire Robert Mercer is able to sell power to the highest bidder.
Using Brexit as his petri dish, Mercer donated millions of pounds to the Leave campaign, combining vast data mining with harvesting Facebook profiles.
During the US election, his organisation sent individualised messages to targeted voters in vital swing States, while also creating tens of thousands of false Twitter accounts that split and grew exponentially.
They spread the Trump word, both because he’d paid the most to be heard, and because Mercer's Right Wing agenda would be well served.
Brexit was won or lost by a margin 52-48. Trump won solely by electoral college, after losing the popular vote. Mercer’s apparent ability to influence floating voters via social media is disturbingly significant.
Available only to the super rich, this dark bastardising of thought constitutes a new and real threat to our freedoms.
The conceit and deceit we are used to.
©Charlie Adley
28.05.2017
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