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Dishevelled politicians limp to the end of topsy-turvy election
The Maybot asked us to strengthen her hand over Brexit – we declined
(about 7 hours later)
When Brenda from Bristol was told that the Supreme Leader had called a snap general election, her first reaction was: “You’re joking. Not another one. I can’t stand this.” She spoke for the nation. This was the election no one needed and no one wanted. Not even the Maybot. On seven separate occasions, she had given interviews in which she had expressly stated that a general election was not in the national interest.
As the exit poll was announced on the stroke of 10, the opinion room at ITN went into a state of shock. Only a few stunned cheers from Labour supporters broke the silence. The entire script of the general election had been shredded. If the polls were anywhere near correct then the Supreme Leader had blown a 20 point lead in just seven weeks and would end up with fewer seats than David Cameron in 2015. The Maybot had asked the country to strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations and the country had replied: “If it’s all the same with you, we don’t think we’ll bother.”
But with the Conservatives enjoying a 20-point lead over Labour in the opinion polls, even the Maybot’s most rudimentary artificial intelligence could see it might be in her own self-interest. Not that she chose to put it in those exact words outside No 10 on the Tuesday morning after Easter. Rather, she said how annoyed she had been that Labour had deliberately thwarted the will of the people by voting with the government to trigger article 50.
The only inkling that something extraordinary might be on the cards had come in the ITN studios where presenter Tom Bradby was rehearsing with Professor Jane Green from the British Election Study team. A graph appeared on the green screen showing a strong correlation between how people had voted in the referendum and voting intentions in the general election. “That’s unexpected,” Bradby had said. Green agreed but both of them left it there. At the time it just seemed like an outlier.
“This is the Brexit election,” the Supreme Leader announced confidently. Only to never really mention Brexit again throughout the campaign except in the vaguest terms. She repeatedly announced that she alone had a proper Brexit plan, but somehow never found the time to explain what it was. On one occasion she did get round to saying her plan had 12 points, but her mind seemed to go blank after that.
Certainly no one in the spin room had a clue what was coming. On the way in I had bumped into Robert Peston. “What’s your prediction?” I asked. “Who knows?” he had said. “A Tory majority of about 80?” I asked the same of the columnist Matthew Parris. “A Tory majority of 67” he had replied. “But I am only being that precise to sound as if I know what I’m talking about.” Even so, both he and Peston sounded entirely plausible.
Besides, what the Maybot really wanted to talk about was “strong and stable leadership”. Up and down the country she travelled, to tell handfuls of luckless Tory activists in near-empty community centres that only she could provide the strong and stable leadership the country needed because she was a strong and stable leader. The more often she said it, the more deranged she sounded. By the end of the campaign, she dealt only in tautology and non sequiturs and was barely able to speak in sentences.
Once the exit poll had been released, it was time to check in with Camilla Cavendish who had worked for David Cameron in the Number 10 policy unit. Surely her old boss must be feeling a little bit of schadenfreude at the Maybot’s apparent demise. “Oh no,” she said loyally. “He’s really not that type of person.” Not even a little bit? “Absolutely not.”
None of the smaller parties got a look in. The Liberal Democrat revival never got off the ground – no matter how often Tim Farron insisted he was really cool with people having gay sex. As for the SNP, they had nowhere to go but down after their high point of 2015. With Scots showing little enthusiasm for a second independence referendum, Nicola Sturgeon used the party’s manifesto launch to say that while she did definitely want another referendum, she was flexible on dates and was quite happy to wait until the Tories had made such a mess of Brexit that the whole of Scotland was clamouring to stay in the EU.
But one member of the ancien régime wasn’t quite so good at disguising his emotions. George Osborne was one of ITV’s studio guests and there was a definite sparkle in his eye as the Tories were predicted to get just 314 seats. But after the momentary sense of elation and vindication there was a longer expression of barely concealed regret. If he hadn’t been quite so quick to abandon his career on the backbenches for the editorship of the Evening Standard, then he might have been one of the frontrunners to take over the leadership of the Tory party within a matter of weeks.
Often it didn’t even feel as if it was a straight fight between the Tories and Labour. Rather it was a clash of two personalities: the Maybot versus Jeremy Corbyn. Philip Hammond was only allowed out once, and that was to be publicly humiliated when the Supreme Leader refused to say he would carry on as chancellor. Jeremy Hunt, Andrea Leadsom and others were nowhere to be seen, as they could not be trusted to think quickly enough about policies that had been announced the day before and had since been ditched.
By now it was clear that no one really knew what they were talking about. Of all the outcomes that had been considered, the possibility of a hung parliament had never really featured. Ed Balls, another studio guest, also appeared to be experiencing mixed emotions – ecstatic at the apparent Labour revival and gutted not to be at the centre of it. He had come prepared to write Jeremy Corbyn’s obituary and was now having to ad lib tentative praise.
Boris Johnson was only wheeled out in the last days of the campaign. After weeks of having his narcissistic cravings go unsatisfied, he was only too happy to drop his trousers in public and tell a few gags. Anything to get some attention. This was very convenient for the Maybot, who wanted everyone to forget she had been responsible for running down police numbers over the previous six years. Not a good look when the country suffered two terrorist attacks in as many weeks.
It was hard to know which party was more caught on the hop, the Tories or Labour. Both sides were lost for words. Michael Gove was first to rally to the Conservative cause by pointing out that exit polls could be wrong and that it was too early to rush to judgment. But he still looked as if he knew the game was up.
Jeremy Corbyn’s problem was rather different. It wasn’t that he didn’t have good people to send out to spread the message. It was more that the good people didn’t want to be seen promoting their leader, as they thought his name was toxic to Labour voters in their own constituencies. So Corbyn had to make do with John McDonnell, Emily Thornberry and Diane Abbott. Given the circumstances, Corbyn understandably chose to do much of the heavy lifting himself.
Even if the Maybot were to squeeze over the line with a narrow majority, her authority would be destroyed. She would be a laughing stock in the country and the Tories would never forgive her. As Gove spoke, Lynton Crosby was quietly handing back his knighthood. No one would ever trust him to run a general election again. A red-eyed Liam Fox could barely remember his own name. The studio manager passed him a tissue to wipe his tears and bundled him into a cab.
And he did it well. His authenticity, combined with a manifesto that offered a change from austerity, struck a chord with many people. And when the Maybot began to self-destruct by publishing a manifesto that none of her cabinet had actually read, that no one had bothered to cost and that had to be ripped up within days of being published, the polls began to narrow. Strong and stable had become weak and wobbly.
The only person who seemed to be almost entirely unbothered by the turn of events was Stanley Johnson. “Isn’t this exciting?” he said cheerfully. I wasn’t entirely sure his son Boris would be feeling the same way. It was still early in the night but it was looking like turning into a long, hard and worrying one for the Tories.
With the election getting ever closer, the Tories had little option but to make a virtue out of the Maybot’s inadequacies. Mediocrity became something to aspire to. At the final rally in Birmingham, Johnson resorted to urging Conservatives to get behind the Maybot because she was marginally less rubbish than Corbyn. A fittingly dismal end to one of the most dismal campaigns in living memory. Brenda wouldn’t be the only one to be grateful it was all over.
