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| This election has brought the smell of spring after an endless Tory Narnia | This election has brought the smell of spring after an endless Tory Narnia |
| (7 months later) | |
| Theresa May’s leadership is in crisis, the DUP have nothing to offer and another election is inevitable. Can the progressive parties build on Jeremy Corbyn’s politics of hope? | |
| General election 2017 - live updates | |
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| Zoe Williams | |
| Sun 11 Jun 2017 17.01 BST | |
| Last modified on Sat 25 Nov 2017 02.52 GMT | |
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| This is the kind of election, like 1997, when progressives like to share with one another where they were when it happened. Me? I was in a TV studio. It was 9.48pm on 8 June. A producer said: “I can’t tell you this, and don’t you tell anyone, but the results aren’t what you think. I have shivers running up and down my body. You’ve only got to wait another 12 minutes.” Twelve minutes. It’s a bloody age. But then, the exit polls were out: Conservatives, 314 (they ended up with 318); Labour, 266 (finally, 262). I was sitting next to the Daily Mail’s comical henchman, Quentin Letts. The most I had dared to hope, in a domestic flight of fancy and never in public, was that Theresa May could be held to the paltry majority she had started with. I hadn’t even allowed myself to imagine her losing seats. | This is the kind of election, like 1997, when progressives like to share with one another where they were when it happened. Me? I was in a TV studio. It was 9.48pm on 8 June. A producer said: “I can’t tell you this, and don’t you tell anyone, but the results aren’t what you think. I have shivers running up and down my body. You’ve only got to wait another 12 minutes.” Twelve minutes. It’s a bloody age. But then, the exit polls were out: Conservatives, 314 (they ended up with 318); Labour, 266 (finally, 262). I was sitting next to the Daily Mail’s comical henchman, Quentin Letts. The most I had dared to hope, in a domestic flight of fancy and never in public, was that Theresa May could be held to the paltry majority she had started with. I hadn’t even allowed myself to imagine her losing seats. |
| There have been countless moments since 2010 when a Conservative has stood before the nation and said something that is demonstrably untrue, on spending, on the NHS, on food banks, on Brexit and what the people have voted for. But nothing has ever looked so psychedelically unreal as Theresa May outside Downing Street on Friday, talking about the importance of stability having cast the nation into chaos, promising to deliver on what people voted for last June, without so much as a mention of what they voted for this June. Everything took on a playful quality, and not because we’d all had a late night. Whatever this ambiguous result told us, one thing was certain: we no longer have to listen to this party saying the opposite of the truth, and accept it as the consensus view. | There have been countless moments since 2010 when a Conservative has stood before the nation and said something that is demonstrably untrue, on spending, on the NHS, on food banks, on Brexit and what the people have voted for. But nothing has ever looked so psychedelically unreal as Theresa May outside Downing Street on Friday, talking about the importance of stability having cast the nation into chaos, promising to deliver on what people voted for last June, without so much as a mention of what they voted for this June. Everything took on a playful quality, and not because we’d all had a late night. Whatever this ambiguous result told us, one thing was certain: we no longer have to listen to this party saying the opposite of the truth, and accept it as the consensus view. |
| In the first place, it was simply elation at a disaster averted: the Conservatives were so confident. Their rogue element had been briefing the Spectator that they would be in government until 2040. | In the first place, it was simply elation at a disaster averted: the Conservatives were so confident. Their rogue element had been briefing the Spectator that they would be in government until 2040. |
| This turned into a deeper, rounder schadenfreude. The outpouring of wisdom after the event was marvellous: of course May was going to get a kicking; naturally, the U-turn on social care had done for her; wasn’t it the most cringeworthy misjudgment to send Amber Rudd in to debate for her? All this from people who, 12 hours before, had seen a one-party state as a foregone conclusion. And I suddenly understood why Brexiters never got any feelings of remorse, even when the cost of their Marmite went up: to watch the pollsters confounded and the sober heads dizzied, while you flick Vs at them and say, “Ha! You weren’t expecting us to do that!”, is incredibly fun. | This turned into a deeper, rounder schadenfreude. The outpouring of wisdom after the event was marvellous: of course May was going to get a kicking; naturally, the U-turn on social care had done for her; wasn’t it the most cringeworthy misjudgment to send Amber Rudd in to debate for her? All this from people who, 12 hours before, had seen a one-party state as a foregone conclusion. And I suddenly understood why Brexiters never got any feelings of remorse, even when the cost of their Marmite went up: to watch the pollsters confounded and the sober heads dizzied, while you flick Vs at them and say, “Ha! You weren’t expecting us to do that!”, is incredibly fun. |
| Yet the weekend delivered, unbidden, something more meaningful: a sense that everybody else is OK, after all. May tried to sell us on the idea that the people of Britain were just a shade above farmyard animals; so long as they heard the same noises in the same combinations, and associated it with not starving to death, they would be happy to stick with the status quo. More dispiriting even than that was the new centrist idea of the electorate, all economic self-interest and subliminated racism, the human spirit as a genetic malfunction, all toenails and hair. You could tell yourself whatever you liked, that aspiration compared with hope was like margarine to butter, that it wasn’t humanly possible to be as stupid as a Conservative thought you were, but result after result – 2010, 2015, the referendum, Donald Trump – would smack you down again. | Yet the weekend delivered, unbidden, something more meaningful: a sense that everybody else is OK, after all. May tried to sell us on the idea that the people of Britain were just a shade above farmyard animals; so long as they heard the same noises in the same combinations, and associated it with not starving to death, they would be happy to stick with the status quo. More dispiriting even than that was the new centrist idea of the electorate, all economic self-interest and subliminated racism, the human spirit as a genetic malfunction, all toenails and hair. You could tell yourself whatever you liked, that aspiration compared with hope was like margarine to butter, that it wasn’t humanly possible to be as stupid as a Conservative thought you were, but result after result – 2010, 2015, the referendum, Donald Trump – would smack you down again. |
| I never lost faith in anyone I met, but I was starting to swallow the bubble thesis: that any ideal, any ambition, any altruism, any modernity, was just stuff that people in bubbles say. This election restored my faith. When I look at May and see an insult to my intelligence and a threat to my society, probably the people either side of me do as well, even in Kensington. | I never lost faith in anyone I met, but I was starting to swallow the bubble thesis: that any ideal, any ambition, any altruism, any modernity, was just stuff that people in bubbles say. This election restored my faith. When I look at May and see an insult to my intelligence and a threat to my society, probably the people either side of me do as well, even in Kensington. |
| By Sunday, reality had bitten; rhetorically, the situation remained delicious. A woman who fought a campaign touting herself as the only alternative to a “coalition of chaos” was trying to forge exactly that. An election called in order to strengthen the government’s hand in the Brexit negotiations had instead revealed us as a nation deeply conflicted about their every aspect. As exhilarating as it is, this is also pretty disastrous. The Conservative habit of blowing everything up for the sake of their own party’s interests and, worse, their own egos, has got to stop. They are a danger to the nation, and even they know it. From the big beasts (Michael Heseltine) to the small beasts (Nigel Evans), Conservatives lined up to stick the boot in, not just to the prime minister but to the entire post-referendum Tory project. George Osborne called May a dead woman walking. Her loathed advisors, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned but it was a sideshow, the surrender of an already irrelevant enemy. | By Sunday, reality had bitten; rhetorically, the situation remained delicious. A woman who fought a campaign touting herself as the only alternative to a “coalition of chaos” was trying to forge exactly that. An election called in order to strengthen the government’s hand in the Brexit negotiations had instead revealed us as a nation deeply conflicted about their every aspect. As exhilarating as it is, this is also pretty disastrous. The Conservative habit of blowing everything up for the sake of their own party’s interests and, worse, their own egos, has got to stop. They are a danger to the nation, and even they know it. From the big beasts (Michael Heseltine) to the small beasts (Nigel Evans), Conservatives lined up to stick the boot in, not just to the prime minister but to the entire post-referendum Tory project. George Osborne called May a dead woman walking. Her loathed advisors, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned but it was a sideshow, the surrender of an already irrelevant enemy. |
| There are two separate crises going on, one within the Conservative party and one without, in the nation at large, which needs a competent government and a team of negotiators thinking rationally about its future. The Conservatives’ crisis is salient in the immediate term, since their ramshackle dealings with the DUP – one side claiming a deal, the other thinking talks are continuing – will affect whether or not they are seaworthy by the time of the Queen’s speech, and consequently when we have to have yet another election. But this is mainly soap opera, personalities running at each other, all vying for the title “most unattractive and objectionable”. | There are two separate crises going on, one within the Conservative party and one without, in the nation at large, which needs a competent government and a team of negotiators thinking rationally about its future. The Conservatives’ crisis is salient in the immediate term, since their ramshackle dealings with the DUP – one side claiming a deal, the other thinking talks are continuing – will affect whether or not they are seaworthy by the time of the Queen’s speech, and consequently when we have to have yet another election. But this is mainly soap opera, personalities running at each other, all vying for the title “most unattractive and objectionable”. |
| To point out the moral and political deficiencies of the DUP is important work but very swiftly achieved: they have nothing to bring to a modern body politic. The DUP are the closest thing we have in this country to institutional religious extremism, all ancient hatreds and bigotries so dated it is like arguing with the past. Whether the deal lasts a week or a month (it cannot last a year), it is just part of the death throes. Most Conservatives can see it. A fair few will not be able to support it. When the only person in the country who believes you won is Isabel Oakeshott, you know the gig’s up. But however they resolve it, and however long it takes, their crisis is, thank God, no longer ours. | To point out the moral and political deficiencies of the DUP is important work but very swiftly achieved: they have nothing to bring to a modern body politic. The DUP are the closest thing we have in this country to institutional religious extremism, all ancient hatreds and bigotries so dated it is like arguing with the past. Whether the deal lasts a week or a month (it cannot last a year), it is just part of the death throes. Most Conservatives can see it. A fair few will not be able to support it. When the only person in the country who believes you won is Isabel Oakeshott, you know the gig’s up. But however they resolve it, and however long it takes, their crisis is, thank God, no longer ours. |
| The urgent question is how to address the larger issues constructively: there are two positions, not necessarily mutually exclusive. One is that another election is inevitable, and requires concentration, if the nation’s gag reflex – anything but May – is to be marshalled into something more stable. Jeremy Corbyn ran a brilliant campaign this time and will doubtless build on it. There are people who were using the claim that he was unelectable as a fig leaf for a deeper and less coherent distrust, while there were other people who genuinely didn’t mind him but thought of him as an unrealistic choice. The more plausible he looks, the more support he will gather. | The urgent question is how to address the larger issues constructively: there are two positions, not necessarily mutually exclusive. One is that another election is inevitable, and requires concentration, if the nation’s gag reflex – anything but May – is to be marshalled into something more stable. Jeremy Corbyn ran a brilliant campaign this time and will doubtless build on it. There are people who were using the claim that he was unelectable as a fig leaf for a deeper and less coherent distrust, while there were other people who genuinely didn’t mind him but thought of him as an unrealistic choice. The more plausible he looks, the more support he will gather. |
| But he has to use the coming weeks to build alliances with the SNP and the Lib Dems; even if, by the winter, he were in a position to form a government without them, he would be much stronger with them. This is also true on the ground; incredible advances were made by local activists in the pursuit of an anti-Tory alliance in some areas – the north-east, the south-east, London – but we still have the absurd situation of an entirely blue Cornwall, for instance, where the combination of Labour and Lib Dem votes would have ousted the Conservative in almost every seat. | But he has to use the coming weeks to build alliances with the SNP and the Lib Dems; even if, by the winter, he were in a position to form a government without them, he would be much stronger with them. This is also true on the ground; incredible advances were made by local activists in the pursuit of an anti-Tory alliance in some areas – the north-east, the south-east, London – but we still have the absurd situation of an entirely blue Cornwall, for instance, where the combination of Labour and Lib Dem votes would have ousted the Conservative in almost every seat. |
| The other point is that, however long it takes before we have a viable party in power, the Brexit clock is still ticking. Armando Iannucci suggested on Question Time on Friday that it is time to put together a cross-party team to negotiate. It is hard to argue with this: if the election has demonstrated anything, it is that a vote for leave was not synonymous with a vote for the Conservatives. Strongly leave areas remained Labour; strongly remain areas sometimes went back to the Tories (well, OK, Richmond Park; I’m trying to be generous here). Since nobody, but nobody, thinks we should shoehorn another referendum in between now and the next general election, we have made that decision and it is not party-aligned. Therefore, all the parties should participate in its execution. | The other point is that, however long it takes before we have a viable party in power, the Brexit clock is still ticking. Armando Iannucci suggested on Question Time on Friday that it is time to put together a cross-party team to negotiate. It is hard to argue with this: if the election has demonstrated anything, it is that a vote for leave was not synonymous with a vote for the Conservatives. Strongly leave areas remained Labour; strongly remain areas sometimes went back to the Tories (well, OK, Richmond Park; I’m trying to be generous here). Since nobody, but nobody, thinks we should shoehorn another referendum in between now and the next general election, we have made that decision and it is not party-aligned. Therefore, all the parties should participate in its execution. |
| That is the macro case; the micro case is that the Conservative party simply doesn’t have the talent to go it alone. What with Boris Johnson’s famous eye for detail and diplomacy, Liam Fox’s gigantic brain and David Davis’s credibility … they always say sarcasm doesn’t work in print, but somehow, where Johnson and the rest of the Brexit team are concerned, it is the only thing left. The insults simply don’t exist to do justice to these people, or rather, it is too ignoble and fatiguing to have to reach for them. They actually need Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon, they need people of goodwill and intelligence to restore our national standing; if we send into these negotiations people who are pariahs in their own parliament, we will be dealt with as a departing pariah nation. | That is the macro case; the micro case is that the Conservative party simply doesn’t have the talent to go it alone. What with Boris Johnson’s famous eye for detail and diplomacy, Liam Fox’s gigantic brain and David Davis’s credibility … they always say sarcasm doesn’t work in print, but somehow, where Johnson and the rest of the Brexit team are concerned, it is the only thing left. The insults simply don’t exist to do justice to these people, or rather, it is too ignoble and fatiguing to have to reach for them. They actually need Keir Starmer and Nicola Sturgeon, they need people of goodwill and intelligence to restore our national standing; if we send into these negotiations people who are pariahs in their own parliament, we will be dealt with as a departing pariah nation. |
| We have to recognise the chaos and anxiety, yet situate it where it belongs, a creation of the Conservatives’ childish psychodrama that we have all been unfortunate enough to be yoked into. It’s a reality, all right, but it’s not one to build anything on. | We have to recognise the chaos and anxiety, yet situate it where it belongs, a creation of the Conservatives’ childish psychodrama that we have all been unfortunate enough to be yoked into. It’s a reality, all right, but it’s not one to build anything on. |
| The facts are these: Jeremy Corbyn increased Labour’s share of the vote by more than any of the party’s leaders since 1945, and he did so by reinvigorating a generation. I personally don’t believe the 18-34s – a million of whom registered to vote in the seven weeks after the election was called – voted in their own interests, for the tuition fees offer. I wouldn’t mind if they had; it is an absurdity of our politics that we assume old people vote with their wallets, and yet expect the young to vote with their values. It is entirely right that, one day, someone would have the genius idea of putting something in a manifesto that actually offered something to the under-60s. We have had decades of decisions made in the interests of the older voter, which have locked the young out of everything, from housing in their own country to the freedom to move to a better one. Having reared up against all this, it is inconceivable that they will retreat back to an acceptance of the status quo. | The facts are these: Jeremy Corbyn increased Labour’s share of the vote by more than any of the party’s leaders since 1945, and he did so by reinvigorating a generation. I personally don’t believe the 18-34s – a million of whom registered to vote in the seven weeks after the election was called – voted in their own interests, for the tuition fees offer. I wouldn’t mind if they had; it is an absurdity of our politics that we assume old people vote with their wallets, and yet expect the young to vote with their values. It is entirely right that, one day, someone would have the genius idea of putting something in a manifesto that actually offered something to the under-60s. We have had decades of decisions made in the interests of the older voter, which have locked the young out of everything, from housing in their own country to the freedom to move to a better one. Having reared up against all this, it is inconceivable that they will retreat back to an acceptance of the status quo. |
| Added to that is a new determination among the not-necessarily-young to keep the Conservatives out at all costs, which is visible in the collapse of the Green vote, which mostly went Labour, sometimes tactically Liberal Democrat. All of that energy and cooperation has to be kept aloft. Concretely, that means the major progressive parties – Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP – have to bring the environment to the centre of their rhetoric, find a way to both trenchantly oppose the Tories and be humble towards one another, and maintain the hopeful narrative that Corbyn has done so well, Tim Farron and Sturgeon less well. | Added to that is a new determination among the not-necessarily-young to keep the Conservatives out at all costs, which is visible in the collapse of the Green vote, which mostly went Labour, sometimes tactically Liberal Democrat. All of that energy and cooperation has to be kept aloft. Concretely, that means the major progressive parties – Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP – have to bring the environment to the centre of their rhetoric, find a way to both trenchantly oppose the Tories and be humble towards one another, and maintain the hopeful narrative that Corbyn has done so well, Tim Farron and Sturgeon less well. |
| Our situation is messy and unstable. The Europeans are laughing at us and making salty remarks about surrealism having been invented in Brussels. But it is also quite beautiful, revivified, the smell of spring after the seemingly endless Tory Narnia. Tend to the rejuvenated politics. Think about the Conservatives as little as constitutionally possible. They never thought about us. | Our situation is messy and unstable. The Europeans are laughing at us and making salty remarks about surrealism having been invented in Brussels. But it is also quite beautiful, revivified, the smell of spring after the seemingly endless Tory Narnia. Tend to the rejuvenated politics. Think about the Conservatives as little as constitutionally possible. They never thought about us. |
| General election 2017 | |
| Theresa May | |
| Jeremy Corbyn | |
| Conservatives | |
| Labour | |
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