Election 2017: Democralypse Now

Well well, here we are again at another election day. For the third time in as many years, British people will be heading to the polls to irreversibly screw up the country have their say on issues of the day. But before we head to our nearest run-down community centre/primary school, perhaps we should take a step back and address some pressing questions. How did we get here? Who's involved? And just wtf is happening?

To begin, let's cast our minds through the fogs of time back to the halcyon days of yore. 

The year is 2015.

David Bowie was still alive. A sane person lived in the White House. This blog was regularly updated. Yes, in hindsight 2015 was a simpler time. A better time. And so it was that the country went into Election Day with polls quietly predicting that notorious sandwich-botherer Ed Milliband was likely to be our next Prime Minister. 

This guyyyyy

It was, therefore, a bit of a rude surprise when David Cameron not only remained at No. 10, but managed to increase the Tory majority. This meant that the Conservatives could finally go it alone and get rid of their irksome coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems were effectively wiped out in the 2015 General Election, which was personally a beautiful moment of schadenfreude. It turns out that if people vote for your party (present company included) as a centre-left bulwark against the Tories, they get a bit miffed if you then immediately use your newly-won MPs to turn around and prop up a Conservative government enacting savage cuts to public services and benefits. In exchange for selling out their supporters and principles, the Lib Dems received concessions that amounted to an employee of the month award for Nick Clegg, 25p in coppers, and half a Curly Wurly.

Cheers Nick. Thanks, mate.

David Cameron enjoyed a lovely summer, presumably spent holidaying with the family and daydreaming about cutting essential services for the poorest in Britain. Unfortunately for Dave, this tranquillity was shattered in September by the frankly hilarious allegation that whilst he was at university, he had- and there is not really a delicate way to phrase this- placed his todger into the mouth of a dead pig. Given the British propensity to enjoy a) naughty impropriety, and b) laughing at authority figures, the scandal was manna from heaven.

Fast forward a mere six months, and Cameron announced that there was to be a referendum on Britain's membership in the European Union. Now, I'm not saying that he announced the referendum entirely because of the story, but I will say that the public quickly forgot about the PM's proclivity for piggies and instead began a furious debate about Europe. I covered Brexit in depth so I shan't bang on about it here; suffice to say it was a complete shit-show.

Ugh.

The immediate upshot was that Cameron resigned, as he'd failed to persuade voters that the EU wasn't exactly the nefarious Galactic Empire-style organisation that UKIP claimed. About a year after winning a majority in the last General Election, DC was out on his arse and a Tory leadership contest began. The consensus seemed to be that the Tories needed to replace Cameron (pro-Remain) with an unabashed Brexiteer. After a bruising leadership contest involving the Pro-Brexit heavyweights of Michael Gove, Boris Johnson, and...er...Andrea Leadsom (no seriously, she was in front for a bit) Britains new Prime Minister was: former Remain campaigner Theresa May!

Clearly, it was this forceful body language that catapulted Theresa to the leadership 

What had Theresa been up to prior to this? Well, when not campaigning to remain in the EU (irony klaxon!), she had been the Home Secretary, where her duties had mostly seemed to consist of cutting 20,000 police officers, legal aid, and pretty much anything else that might ensure a smoothly run justice system.

[The Imperial March swells in background]

Theresa assured us that she was the right person to negotiate Britain's exit from the EU. She was a little sketchy on the details, but she'd presumably do this by repeating the phrases "innovative jam" and "red, white, and blue Brexit" until the EU negotiators would simply lose the will to live and give us everything we wanted. 

Indeed, Theresa and the Tories were so confident that they were the only ones who could secure a non-terrible extraction from the EU that they decided to roll the dice and call another General Election to...I want to say shore up their base? Honestly, it doesn't really make any logical sense as she could have just stayed in office until 2020 and got on with it anyway, but if there's one thing to be said of the Conservatives lately it's that they're not afraid to gamble their political capital on risky public votes.

And thus, the election of 2017 was officially on. Theresa "Strong and Stable" May was going to be Margaret Thatcher 2.0, facing off against a dangerous, lefty Labour leader. It seemed like it would be a sure-fire strategy. 

But what of the Labour leader? Jeremy Corbyn won the leadership of the Labour Party in 2015, to the delight of many Labour members and the horror of New Labour bigwigs. Here was a man who promised scary things, like investment in the NHS funded by higher taxes for rich people. 

It's the remix to ignition

Hot and fresh out the kitchen

4,000 homes for rough sleepers

And you won't have to pay for tuition pic.twitter.com/rLQnJ3Kjdp

— amy (@amyp0tter) May 13, 2017

Clearly, these naive notions of compassion and egalitarianism would destroy all the hard work of Tony Blair et al. It was decided that Corbyn had to be taken down 'for the good of the party', and so another leadership contest was held last year. Of course, JC won by an even bigger margin. It turns out that Labour party members and supporters like "lefty" ideas. WHO KNEW??? 

Jeremy Corbyn addressing critics (2017, colourised)

The general consensus seemed to be that Jezza would get absolutely steamrollered. But once the campaign actually started, an unusual thing happened: instead of dismissing Corbyn out of hand, people actually started listening to the things that Labour was promising (scrapping tuition fees, properly funding the NHS, renationalising the railways) and realising that yeah, it would actually be nice if Britain wasn't quite so wilfully shit.

:-/

It all started going pear shaped for the Conservatives, who turned their focus on the issues that voters really care about: the return of fox hunting, introducing a 'Dementia tax', and more deep cuts than a new set of Bob Dylan basement tapes. They tried to frighten the electorate by comparing their own "Strong & Stable"™ leadership to a "Coalition of Chaos"©; an alliance of Labour with the SNP and other smaller parties to form a working majority. Noticeably, this narrative has been somewhat downplayed lately as it turns out that people seem to actually quite like the idea of a Coalition of Chaos, probably because it sounds like a group of crime fighting renegades like The Avengers or the Justice League. All in all, the usual smooth polish of a Conservative election campaign was in short supply. Theresa May even had her own 'Ed Milliband Moment' early on, when she failed to look normal eating some chips.

Brings a whole new meaning to the phrase "pissed on one's chips"

Which brings us to today: election day. Labour have had a good campaign and the Conservatives have been off-colour, but it's looking as though current form will be inconsequential. In spite of Labour's late surge, they're still slated to lose the election by a decent margin. 

If there's any encouragement to be had, it's that polls have been catastrophically wrong in recent years. Maybe this time, that will be good news.