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General Election 2017 – Polling Day is Here


For the first time in my living memory a General Election is happening with a real choice on offer. Not just a political either/or, but a real moral decision. There’s no other way to put it, voting Conservative, on these issues with these policies, is immoral.
After a short sharp campaign from Labour, and a shocking, shambolic campaign from the Tories, people will go to the polls today.
The Tories will probably win.
Why? Because the establishment – everyone from the PLP through the media through big business – were set on hamstringing a newly socialist Labour before the election even started. Smearing and insulting and degrading Corbyn and his allies and giving the Tories a 24 point head start in the polls. One they have squandered, simply because they knew they could.
Jeremy Corbyn is a decent human being, who argues his case rationally and calmly. His policies, deemed “far left” now, but in reality centre-left compared to the UK of only 40 years ago, are ethical and sensible. He’s not a powerful speaker, but he is softly charming, and engages with people.
Theresa May is a personality vacuum. The Maybot, imperfectly programmed, frayed wires sparking her face into peculiar shapes that never approach a genuine human emotion. Incapable of giving a factual answer, because she doesn’t know any facts. Incapable of straight talking, because she’s totally bent.
And she will probably win.
The Labour manifesto is a rational approach to solving societal problems at all levels, and so carefully costed that when May accused it of “not adding up” she was booed on live television. No one has found any angle to attack the numbers, saving the ludicrous idea that “getting rich people to pay taxes is hard”. Yes, it is. But that’s what the law is for.
The Tory manifesto? A joke. Quite seriously, a joke. It’s like it was constructed to see how callous and inaccurate and cruel they could be and still win an election. British Corporation taxes are already the lowest in the G20, but we’ll lower them again. They’ll make up the short-fall by stealing houses from the elderly, cancelling free school meals for poor children and selling off NHS assets. Bring back fox-hunting. Start killing elephants.
We literally have someone running for Prime Minister who has publicly endorsed privatising NHS assets, and abolishing Human Rights Laws.
The arrogance of the Conservatives, that they can dish this up to the public and expect to win, is nauseating. The fact it will likely make no difference? Sad.
But there is hope still. Labour have run a remarkable campaign, and will have severely cut the Tory majority…if the vote is fair. No one could possibly believe a Tory landslide now, and if one is announced this evening, it will be the clearest evidence yet that the system is rigged.
Regardless of the result, the Tories come out of this election looking bad. Theresa May is revealed to be craven, incompetent and unsympathetic. The party more interested in positioning for cabinet spots after the election than running a campaign. The mask has slipped, and their contempt for the ordinary people they notionally represent has never been more obvious. While Corbyn, finally given almost-equal media access has got his message across to huge numbers of people.
You can feel there is a change of mood, that people are really starting to listen. It might not translate into victory this year, because of the media-created handicap, but it could, sometime soon.
Jonathan Pie sums it up nicely in the above video:
“Defeat has never looked so exciting”


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