Month: July 2024

It’s Not The Size, It’s What You Do With It

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in Little Bit Of Politics

With which appalling title, and if you don’t want to know the results of the General Election look away now, I can say that Labour has had a huge win.

But if a week is a long time in politics then even just a couple of days is quite a while, so with thoughts already looking to the next election (“not another one?” as Brenda from Bristol would say) the experts, and also lots of people on Twitter, are digging into the actual numbers to point out things like: Labour has won a lot of seats but their actual number of overall votes is very similar to 2019 when they had a huge loss. And that it’s an election the Conservatives have lost, rather than one that Labour has won.

Indeed, even bleary-eyed at half past five on Friday morning, my mental arithmetic was up to working out that, taking the stats for three Welsh seats that scrolled across my TV screen, in each case the combined votes for Tory and Reform was more than the total Labour had just won with. I would expect the Tories, as they pursue the long dreary post-mortem that is no doubt already underway, will be trying to identify how much of the Reform vote came from people who would normally vote Tory, didn’t want to do so this time, but also didn’t want to go so far as to vote Labour. If they think that sort of voter constitutes the lion’s share of Reform’s support, then their first port of call will surely be to claw back as many of those votes as possible.

Indeed, several pundits have already suggested Labour, huge win or not, could be just a one-term government this time. (Although I have to agree with the logic of it, I sort of feel Monday would have been time enough to point it out, let Starmer & co at least have the weekend – it’s a little bit like being that guy reeling off the divorce statistics at a wedding reception.) Their only hope, it would seem, their one desperate ploy to hold on to power, would be to improve the state of the country and to actually help people. Crikey.

I’d like to think that might be the plan anyway, and not just to try and win the next election. (Sorry Brenda.) With the cynical qualifier that the most recent time I heard the slogan ‘Country First, Party Second’ was in the sentence “Country First, Party Second isn’t a slogan”; and with the additional, even more cynical, qualifier that no doubt, as they all do, Labour will soon come to think that since they are the best thing for the country, then what’s good for the party must ipso facto also be good for the country; with all that said, it would be nice to think that, at the moment at least, their aspiration is to try and make things, lots of things, better.

Of course, Labour have as much chance as any other party of making a complete hash of it – but as I pointed out to a work-colleague inexplicably mourning the surprise defeat of the Conservatives on Friday morning, the choice here was surely between a party which might or might not be rubbish, or a party which has demonstrated that they definitely ARE rubbish. I was never very good at probability ratios, but I think that’s a 1 in 3 chance of a good outcome?

I don’t understand quantum physics either, but to fumble another analogy, it was a choice between Schrodinger’s Labour Party, or the “Your cat is definitely dead” Tory Party. (In fact, given how things have been going recently that should probably read “Your cat is definitely dead. But don’t forget, under the Conservatives there are more taxidermists than ever before.”)

So we wait and for a short while at least we can maybe even hope (perhaps naively, perhaps foolishly) that things will improve. That any new start is better than none. And if not… well, no doubt sooner or later there’ll be another election.

Sorry Brenda.

Waking Up With A Huge Election

by andrewcurnow1971, posted in 1990s, Little Bit Of Politics, TV

Not that I want to suggest all I do is watch TV. But…

…I’ve watched far more election-based programming this time round than ever before, although I don’t know why. Maybe I just don’t have enough DVDs?

From the moment the election was announced in the pouring rain, it felt like an inexorable move towards the inevitable outcome of a Labour win; and yet despite that, and although I would by no means say I’ve sought out everything (because, I don’t mind admitting, I do at least have some DVDs) I have watched a lot. The first of the ‘Sunak/Starmer’ head to heads. Sky’s ‘one at a time’ version of the same. The BBC’s ‘seven at a time’ debate, a mixed assortment of prominent figures lined up as if in some bizarre quiz show (“Angela Rayner, come on down!”). I even sat through the Question Time specials where six leaders each got half an hour (alas, none of them a patch on Tony Hancock’s).

I am not, however, if there was any uncertainty on the question, any kind of political heavyweight, so given that I almost dozed off at a petrol pump the other day there was never any chance I was going to stay up to watch the whole kit & caboodle on Thursday night. I surfaced about 4am Friday though (surprising my dog who usually makes me surface about 5am) so was still up and watching in plenty of time to get the flavour of things.

The last election I can remember being properly interested in was in 1997. That was of course the year of Tony Blair’s landslide, the night of the famous ‘Portillo Moment’, a phrase still used to describe the toppling of a prominent, but deeply unpopular, MP.  Given that he’s spent the subsequent quarter of a century reinventing himself as a sort of poor man’s Michael Palin (well, rich man’s I suppose) I wonder how Mr Portillo feels about giving his name to this phenomenon?

Whatever he feels about it, there were certainly some Portillo Moments to be… Would it be unkind to say ‘enjoyed’? Oh, what the heck – there were certainly some of them to be enjoyed on Friday. Of all the ghastly things he’s done, Jacob Rees-Mogg finally sealed his reputation as a wrong ‘un, causing a furore online by misattributing a quote from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang in his speech. (I have to admit I was amazed he’d even seen it – although I suspect he thinks it’s the story of the much-maligned, misunderstood child catcher who is cruelly brought down by a bunch of bloody peasants).

But, to be fair, he did at least make a speech. Compare that with Liz Truss who not only had the appalling bad manners to keep her returning officer and fellow candidates waiting for ages, she then stropped off without a word. She seemed to then spend some time circling the venue looking for the exit before being briefly cornered by a BBC reporter, thoroughly declining to take any responsibility either for her personal defeat, or for that of the party as a whole. After which she wandered off very much with the air of somebody deluded enough to think they’d be back. To paraphrase her own famous comments on cheese imports, She Is A Disgrace.

So, there were winners, there were losers, there were gracious speeches admitting defeat, there were magnanimous speeches accepting victory. There was something from Nigel Farage (but isn’t there always). There was an over-excited Jeremy Vine with yet another over-complicated graphic. There was the controversial co-hosting of Clive M and Laura K on the BBC; and the inexplicable co-hosting of Krishnan Guru-Murthy, Emily Maitlis and (this is the inexplicable bit) Nadine Dorries (!) on Channel 4. There were a few old faces popping up to comment (although I’m pleased he never became PM, still I find it oddly reassuring to see Neil Kinnock pop up). There were tears, there were laughs, there were surprises.

It could maybe have done with a big song & dance number to finish but other than that, yes, a good evening’s viewing!