Joseph Mallord William Turner Wreckers, Coast of Northumberland 1834
Is it sheer hubris, or is it just incompetence? It’s a question often asked when it comes to politics. And regularly, the answer is both. Still, what the ruling British political class has put on display recently seems to exist in a category all its own. Less than a year go, then-PM David Cameron lost the Brexit referendum that he called himself and was dead sure he would win by a landslide.
His successor Theresa May, Cameron’s Home Secretary and a staunch Remain advocate, lost the Brexit vote as much as her PM did, but stayed on, was promoted, and acted for 11 months like Downing Street 10 was hers by Divine Decree. Then she did the exact same thing Cameron did: she looked at polling numbers and decided to go for the jugular: more power through a snap vote.
In the process, May has succeeded in accomplishing the remarkable feat of rejuvenating her main opponent Jeremy Corbyn and his Labour party, who had been left for infighting dead until she called the election, while at the same time dividing her own Tories so much they now resemble Labour from just weeks ago.
The thing that sort of irks is that the speed and intensity with which it all came down would have been way more impressive if she had meant to do it. Oh, and what also irks is that despite a performance worthy of the Comedy Capers, May may still win, since there was always little time, there’s so little time left till Thursday and there have been terror attacks.
A nice addition to the comedy sphere, and I mean no disrespect to any of the terror victims, they’ve gotten enough of that from May et al, is the story behind the PM’s refusal to appear in public debates with Corbyn and perhaps others. When I first saw a few weeks ago that she had announced that refusal, I immediately thought she did not make that decision. She doesn’t have the savvy for that kind of thing.
Someone did it for her. I presumed there had been American advisers added to her team, but I didn’t read anything about that. Until a few days ago, when I saw that political -presumed- heavyweights like Australian Lynton Crosby and American Jim Messina had joined around the time of the snap election announcement on April 18.
And now of course I can’t help thinking that these guys are responsible for the epic failure that May has been over the past six weeks. But that might be giving them too much honor, she’s quite capable of screwing up the way she has all on her own.
And yes, it’s hard to escape a comparison with Hillary here. It’s not about gender, it’s about competence. And if you manage to -almost or entirely- lose to the likes of Trump and Corbyn, despite having a huge lead in the polls, as both ladies had, you’re simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. Not that Corbyn has won yet, at least not in the election.
Guys like Crosby and Messina get paid the big bucks for their expertise in both clean and dirty tricks. They have plenty experience in both. They don’t have opinions, but they make up voters’ opinions for them. Messina was Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign leader, Crosby did elections in Australia, New Zealand, Canada. Funny thing is if you check their records, they have lost quite a few of these campaigns. Even funnier would be if they lose this one too.
But you’re right, it’s not right to be laughing. This past weekend saw another attack on Britain, and another -to put it mildly- far below par performance by Theresa May in its wake. If after this the Britons still hand her a win in Thursday’s general election, give up the country for lost. Stick a fork in it.
May was the one who as Home Secretary was responsible for an investigation into the foreign funding of extremist Islamist groups in the UK that was set to be released a year ago. Instead, we saw last week, she’s actively suppressing its release now that she’s PM, ostensibly because the report mentions Saudi Arabia as a source of such funding, and May recently used her position to help UK arms manufacturers sell billions worth of additional weapons to the Saudi’s.
She’s even on record as saying that arms sales to the House of Saud make Britain more safe, though the report apparently fingers that same House of Saud as funding the very terrorism her country was hit by, three times in a row now, during her stint as PM.
Where does terrorism originate? May won’t admit it’s Saudi Arabia, so she tried, in her first post-attack speech, to deflect the obvious by blaming ‘the internet’. But the internet doesn’t sell arms to countries that support terrorism. Theresa May does.
As people understandably call for more protection after three hits in a row, May has another thing to suppress: as Home Secretary she has been responsible for cutting some 22,000 jobs in the police force, 20,000 in the army, and 60,000 in the healthcare system. And if she would win on Thursday, more of all that is in the offing. At least, that was what was planned; she may make yet another U-turn on that one.
It’s really quite amusing to see a candidate trying to hide from the very elections she herself called, but -again-, given the short time-frame this hide-and-seek tactic might actually work. Moreover, if the British media and his own Labour MPs had not turned against Jeremy Corbyn the way they did until very recently, would May be anywhere near having a shot at victory? It looks unlikely.
There are already bets going that even if she wins the election, which if it happens is sure to be a very narrow win, she’ll be replaced as PM by Boris Johnson before July 1. But he’s as much of a clown as all other major Tory figureheads are today.
The problem of course is that the problems for Britain won’t stop on Thursday, no matter who wins. The problems haven’t even started blooming yet, let alone flowering.
If Corbyn might win, he’s have the entire Conservative entitlement class on his back, and that would turn ugly fast. If May wins, she’ll be ousted in no time, she did far too bad of a job. And then in just a few weeks’ time the Brexit negotiations begin. But with what? With a country that’s been divided to the bone, that’s what.
As things are, Corbyn may yet succeed where Bernie Sanders was rejected and suppressed by his own party. The world today needs people like them, not because it needs ‘socialism’ that much, but because the political landscape has been thrown too far out of balance. If the left gets co-opted by neo-liberalism as much as the right is, there is no left left.
And a sound political system needs representation for the people, the poor(er), as much as representation for the richer ruling classes. It’s not about ideology, but about balance. If you allow either one side or the other of the political equation to run rampant, you will inevitably end up with a dysfunctional society.
And that is what Britain is today. There are plenty slogans out there after yet another terror attack that say things like ‘Britain Stands United’, “London is United” , but it doesn’t and they are not. It’s not terrorism that has divided the country, it’s the political class. It’s not terrorism that has ‘crippled democracy’, it’s the sense of entitlement that many -on both sides of the aisle- have brought to Whitehall.
You would think that at least Jeremy Corbyn could do something about that if he wins. But he would then face an EU negotiating team that operates with a very similar sense of entitlement. And they’re going to come after the British people the same way they have in Greece. Not exactly an enviable position.
And that’s just Brussels. Then there are the terrorist attacks, and there’s little reason to think they will stop. What Britain refuses to recognize until now, and has for hundreds of years as I said before, is that these attacks in London and Manchester are not where it has all started. They don’t come out of the blue, and they don’t come from people who ‘hate us for our freedom’.
The first step is the UK et al spreading terror in Libya and Syria and Iraq, bombing away and selling weapons to ‘friendly’ regimes, creating utter chaos as a political power tool. If you don’t stop that you don’t stop terrorism. The only way to stop terror directed at you is to stop directing it at others.
Stop bombing these countires with impunity, and use the money you save with that to rebuild what you’ve destroyed. That will take away the main reason why there is terrorism in our streets. It will likely go a long way towards solving the refugee problems as well.
All this seems a long way away. It’ll recede further if the entitlement-laden establishment win on Thursday. But whichever way the vote goes, Britain will face a decade or more of deepening hardship, don’t underestimate that; there is no easy way out, not for the people.
Oh wait, I totally forgot to mention that the housing bubble is going to burst too. Oh, well, when it rains…
