No. 92 – Boris Gambles, Shakes the Political Kaleidoscope and Spins the Wheel of Fortune!
Dear James,
They were both at it yesterday. First Jeremy and then Boris. Mr Corbyn emerged from his confused dreams of a 2017 'electoral triumph’ and voted with Boris for a general election. Immediately afterwards, the two main parties battened down their hatches and drew their wagons up around their old old party tribalisms. Boris welcomed back ten of his whipless prodigals and Jeremy gathered around him his team of delirious revolutionaries who beamed and sang their way towards semi-oblivion. The race is on. And it’s anyone’s guess how it will all turn out.
It must be simultaneously exhilarating and nerve wracking for you James. It is the equivalent of a corporate restructuring where everyone is asked to resubmit applications for the jobs they’ve been in for the last hundred years. Their families are disturbed, their pay cheques suddenly threatened and the future is very uncertain. Not for everyone of course. You James have a very safe seat here in Suffolk. Nevertheless, you must be feeling a degree of apprehension?
It was of course a last throw of the dice by Boris himself. It was not in his game plan. He has failed to ‘do or die’ in a ditch and has instead found himself in a box of Mr Cummings’s own making. There was only one way out and he has now thrown himself on the mercy of the electorate. How will that electorate behave I wonder?
Well, of course, Boris’s whole strategy has been to keep out the Brexit Party. They’ve been silent for so long it’s difficult to remember who they are. But they are there alright, waiting like predators in the long grass. In the last few weeks Boris has had all the publicity but all that is about to change. Very soon the Nigel Party will be reminding us all of how all that bravado of the last few months has delivered nothing and that the only party to trust is their own. Trust! Can you imagine?
The grown ups in the Labour Party are probably the most depressed. They can read the roons. Their leader Jeremy has the lowest approval ratings of any leader in its party’s history. The party is approaching the rocks and they know it. Except that Jeremy is a good campaigner and there is just a chance that he will prevent the Tory strategy of taking old Labour seats in the north to dent their prospects there. Especially when those voters have only the ex-public schoolboy twins of Nigel and Boris to choose from. Not exactly the sons of miners, are they?
So if the Tory strategy of winning in the north while losing a few in the south may not be as clear cut as they think, what about the south? Well, the Lib-Dems are quietly confident here. They are the only national party to be unequivocally for remaining in the EU and they will be tempting for many disillusioned One Nation Tories who are clear Remainers and have seen their party hijacked by the extreme right. The South is therefore an open goal for the Lib-Dems. Add the SNP in Scotland, Plaid Cymry in Wales and the DUP in Northern Ireland and it would seem that the nation might have a chance to stop Brexit all together.
The political landscape has changed dramatically in the last five years and is now more volatile than ever. The coming weeks are going to be metaphorically bloody, particularly perhaps in the constituency of Uxbridge? Few seats are safe. However at the moment the chances seem to point to another hung parliament. The Tactical Voting sites are already up and running.
So everything is to play for James. Boris has grabbed the political kaleidoscope and given it a desperate shake. Typical Boris? May be. But it is the gamble with our national wealth and future that is the biggest of all. Today the NIESR reports that Boris’s Brexit deal will, compared with staying in the EU, leave GDP 3.5% lower in 10 years time and the national coffers worse off by £70bn p.a. over the same period. Hardly a headline with which to go into a general election?
Good luck in the coming fray James. Your party is going to need it!
Kind regards,
BH - Your concerned constituent.