Tories humiliated

As people settled in to their sofas and armchairs last night, with election coverage starting at 9pm, presumably thoroughly looking forward to a government of strength and stability, something odd happened; the British people decided quite emphatically that Theresa May was neither.

The past two years have been, shall we say, interesting politically. We’ve had the 2015 election, Brexit and Trump. Those who were sceptical of polling results showing the Tories winning anywhere between a 10 and 100 seat majority were quite spectacularly vindicated when the exit polls compiled for the BBC, Sky and Channel 4 showed a hung parliament.

As the night rumbled through, everybody’s reasonably founded scepticism regarding the electability of Jeremy Corbyn was proven entirely unfounded as constituencies such as Croydon South, High Peak and, reportedly, Kensington turned to Labour. It’s worth repeating that again, Kensington is now being represented by a Labour MP. That is quite astonishing.

Having decided that, riding high in the polls, she would opt for agonisingly transparent opportunism in favour of stability, Theresa May also decided that she would run a campaign based on personality cult. Many, including ourselves, noticed that Theresa May was emboldened in humungous letters across Conservative literature whilst the party name remained bafflingly small.

It’s hard not to laugh your socks off, regardless of political affiliation, at a political leader so staggeringly overconfident of their own personality only to be shown up as somebody completely devoid of any interesting characteristic at all. There were a number of highlights, of course. One was May having a group of journalists locked in a room to avoid answering their questions. Another was her clearly handpicked audiences at her media events. Another was her spectacularly wooden appearance on The One Show, along with her bizarre fixation with appearing normal by revealing, shockingly, that her husband takes out the bins. A particular highlight was her rancid manifesto being picked to pieces within hours of its launch by the press only for the Prime Minister to backpedal faster than Chris Foy in reverse. The highlight of the entire campaign, it has to be said, was the ocean of memes released within hours of her revealing the naughtiest thing she’d ever done was run through a wheat field. The internet can be a seedy, insidious place at times but nothing brings it together quite like an insanely dull politician.

Having been utterly humiliated in a complete rejection of her planned Brexit approach and metaphorical middle finger to both old and young people, most are now expecting the Prime Minister to be deposed within the month.

Jeremy Corbyn is jubilant, as he should be, having shown up possibly the worst political campaign in living memory and bringing out an astonishing 75% youth turnout. Labour have already demanded the Prime Minister’s resignation but it’s hard to imagine that they’re even as intent on toppling her as her own MP’s are.

The government lacking a majority has now turned to Northern Ireland’s DUP in order to prop up a new coalition programme led by the fatally wounded May. In terms of irony levels Theresa May is attempting to take Alanis Morissette’s crown for topping the Google searches for ‘Ironic’.

Having spent the entire campaign attempting to link Jeremy Corbyn with terrorism and a ‘coalition of chaos’, the Prime Minister has now formally entered into negotiations with a party who has regularly and vehemently fought against equal rights, same sex marriage and women’s rights whilst having absolutely undeniable connections to loyalist paramilitary groups who have attacked and killed British security services.

The Daily Mail and The Sun, having quite pitifully thrown all their eggs into May’s basket, seem bereft at the result judging by their websites and most are waiting with baited breath at the gutter reporting imminent to deflect from the fact that May is now leading a government with MP’s who have compared gay people to paedophiles.

Most have also noted that having accused the EU of trying to interfere in an election that she called, May must have the resilience of a champion to even turn up to negotiations having been on the wrong end of the worst political gamble in living memory.

The coming weeks and months are set to get extremely interesting as the Conservatives now have to battle with picking the better of two suicidal scenarios. Either try and amble through a coalition government unable to get most of its policies through, coming back with a presumably disastrous Brexit deal only to watch it shot down in flames by Parliament, or call another election with a different party leader who possesses more charisma than a lawn chair and watch the British people unleash an enormous backlash against a party who have, once again, put their own interests above the stability of the country.

We look forward to taking this journey with you.