Recycle, Reuse, Reduce…Reform?

The first General Election in which I was able to vote was in 1979 when Margaret Thatcher became Britain’s first female Prime Minister. With the exception of the 1997 election when Tony Blair’s Labour Party swept aside the by now tired and scandal struck Tories (sound familiar?) and the 2016 EU Referendum, there has not been a political event so intriguing or fascinating as the lead up to next week’s General Election.

 

It seems that more people are taking an interest in politics than ever before and if that translates into footfall at Polling Stations on 4^th July, we could be in for a record turnout. But social media – Twitter (I really can’t be doing with calling it X) in particular – is not the real world and if the number of canvassers that have come to my door, the number of posters I’ve seen in windows, and the number of promotional leaflets that I have received (which are zero, zero, and one), are any guide, then in my local area, the apathy is overwhelming.

 

In contrast, I was in Eastbourne recently and the number of posters and placards supporting Liberal Democrat candidate Josh Babarinde in evidence suggest that the Conservative majority of 4,000 at the last election will probably be overturned.

 

The only poll that counts is the one on Thursday, but opinion polls have consistently placed Labour ahead of the Conservatives in recent months, to the extent that a complete wipeout of the Tories has been predicted, and their plight may become even more desperate after the recent arrival in the election of Nigel Farage and Reform UK.

 

This YouGov poll may be a realistic indication of how the election will pan out – or then again, it might not be - because a week is a long time in politics (Harold Wilson, 1964, allegedly). Some opinion polls suggest that Reform UK are hot on the heels of the ailing Tories, while anecdotally, Farage’s party are said to be gaining the votes of people who might have been otherwise inclined to go for Labour.

 

This poll would, if translated into crosses in boxes, mean Reform UK forming a government. But it’s a Twitter poll, so it’s about as authentic and accurate as surveying the customers of your local pub at closing time. More realistically, Reform UK are predicted to win somewhere between 3 and 18 seats, although even that latter figure may be optimistic.

 

 

YouGov’s poll may less accurately reflect the national mood now than it did when it was taken, but the notion that Reform UK are in power come 5^th July is even more fanciful than the idea that the Tories will only get 4% of the national vote as this Twitter poll suggests.

 

Any party that is in power for as long as the Tories have inevitably succumbs to scandal, infighting, fatigue and the desire on the part of the electorate for a change, hence the lead that Labour hold in YouGov’s poll.

 

There have been many depressing aspects to this election campaign, and although many of them have featured in the run up to previous elections, they haven’t been as prominent before, nor have all of them featured before.

·        Negativity: The campaigns of all the parties have focussed a great deal on negativity: It’s less a case of how we (insert name of party here) will help you if you elect us, but rather this is how you will suffer if (insert name of an opposing party) get in. It’s also interesting that when a Twitterer asked whether Farage could become PM, a lot of replies were not that respondents hoped so because they thought Farage would do well in power, but that his victory would upset those of a left wing persuasion.

 

·      Manifestos: How many manifesto pledges have been fulfilled by governments in the last fifty years? I have no idea, but I’d guess that the number is vanishingly small. Manifestos are a bit like a 10 year old’s Christmas wish list, ambitious but ultimately unrealistic. Manifesto pledges are probably less important than the personality of party leaders and local candidates.

 

·        Left v Right: Reform UK complained about being labelled far-right. There are suggestions that the Conservatives are now a left-wing party. Those who we traditionally think of as right-wing think nothing of throwing out insults to “loony left liberals” while resenting the description right-wing made of them. Right-wing, left-wing; small ‘c’ conservative, lower case liberal, all becoming blurred and increasingly irrelevant labels, especially given the uniparty idea, or the notion that all parties are under the control of the Word Economic Forum, among others, which is where Nigel Farage has broken the mould somewhat.

 

·        Lies, lies, and more lies: All politicians lie, that’s a given, albeit some more egregiously than others. A major problem today is that lies, even when debunked, continue to circulate and repeated. For every person who hears the lie and the rebuttal, there are a dozen who don’t hear it refuted so continue to believe it. More than ever, it’s best to treat with suspicion anything a politician says that you don’t already know to be true and then get it fact checked.

 

·        Even more lies: Unlike some of their more docile colleagues, journalists like Michal Husain, Krishnan Guru-Murthy, and Victoria Derbyshire have been holding politicians to account in interviews – and the politicians don’t like it much. From Richard Tice being upbraided after falsely claiming that the Office of Budget Responsibility had costed Reform UK’s manifesto pledges (sorry, contract terms) – a task the OBR are prohibited from performing for an opposition party-  to Richi Sunak’s tetchiness when questioned about the false claim about Labour’s tax plans that he said would cost every Briton £2,094 and his early departure from D-Day ceremonies, to Sir Keir Starmer’s inability to define what is a woman or whether he would use private health-care, to Nigel Farage’s sulk when Nick Robinson pointed out an error about foreign student’s dependents, all the leaders have come under greater scrutiny than usual, which can only be a good thing, no matter how much they hate it.

 

·        Immigration: The Rwanda scheme and the Bibby Stockholm barge are astronomically expensive gimmicks dreamt up by an increasingly desperate Tory party to control a problem of their own making. They claim that the Rwanda scheme would be a deterrent to the migrants crossing the channel in small boats, but since the scheme would take over 300 years to clear the current numbers of claimants given its minute capacity that clearly isn’t true. A better deterrent would have been processing asylum claims in a timely manner over the last 14 years rather than letting the backlog build to unimaginable proportions.

 

·        The betting scandal: You think that there’s nothing new under the sun in terms of political corruption and then comes the news that Conservative party workers started placing bets on the date of the election just the day before it was announced and that some conservative candidates are placing bets on losing at the election. Given that footballers and club officials in England are banned from betting on any football related matters from the Premier League down to their eighth tier– not just games involving their team but also the result of the World Cup Final and who is going to be the next manager of Chelsea – it cannot be right that party figures and candidates can benefit from insider information or gamble on events that they can influence.

 

 

This General Election campaign has been eventful and some might say, exciting, but I’m not sure that politics and government should be eventful and exciting; it should be efficient and effective. It would be nice to think that whoever wins on 4^th July, that’s the type of government we will get, but I wouldn’t bet on it.