Wow! I wasn’t expecting that. Were you?
I spent yesterday from 10:30am until 9pm, obviously with some breaks, phoning up potential Labour voters to get the vote out. I phoned hundreds of people, and spoke to scores of them. I spoke to some confused people and I spoke to some very nice people. I heard Labour supporters telling me that they were going to vote Conservative because they didn’t trust Jeremy Corbyn and I heard people tell me that they loved Jeremy Corbyn.
I was expecting a Conservative majority (and bet on it, so I really did expect it!) and an increased one at that! How wrong was I? Massively wrong, but from 10pm until I went to bed at 4am this morning the realisation grew and grew that this was a momentous election.
Here are some initial thoughts:
- the result is essentially a draw between a right wing Conservative party and a centrist everyone else – the Labour, Lib Dem and Green manifestos would all look like mainstream social democrat agendas elsewhere in Europe.
- who knows what happens next? on Brexit? on anything?
- Jeremy Corbyn has been a great campaigner whereas Theresa May is certainly not
- we still do not know whether Jeremy Corbyn can really be a great leader
- who wants to be the next leader of the Tory party?
- social media will have played a large part in this election – the Left offered hope and wit, the Right was far too often showing its nastier side
- environmental NGOs played a tiny part in this general election, as was true in the EU referendum – I will blog about the lobbying act soon but it’s not just about that.
- Andrew Bingham lost High Peak (to Ruth George) and Nick Clegg lost Sheffield Hallam (to Jared O’Mara) – the Peak District grouse moors (a fulcrum for change) are now all Labour (with Angela Smith in Penistone and Stocksbridge)
- I tweeted as the polling stations closed that a Blackbird was singing outside my window, and that it would be singing this morning – it is. You can depend on nature
- oh yes, and this was from Wednesday evening…
‘who knows what happens next? on Brexit? on anything?’
Not me. But I find it very hard to see how the Parliament we have just elected could approve any deal that May is likely to be able to negotiate.
Alan – I agree.
You’ve had an effective part in this achievement – I feel that our natural world is a bit safer now. Our environment can be pushed up the agenda now that more enlightened politicians have more influence. Sleaze and greed took a battering – decency won.
Mike – a bit safer, for a while. Still more to play for!
I’m please you lost your bet Mark, as I suppose you are.
This is wonderful news, not just for the people of this country, but our biodiversity. The Tories are going to struggle to pass any more nasty policy, Theresa May is a lame duck leader, and Jeremy Corbyn is the leader in waiting. The Tories know very well that in another election they would be in serious danger. Corbyn wouldn’t be starting off from the very low base he was at only weeks ago. No one could take seriously the claim that he is “useless” and “unelectable”. The people with a positive and progressive attitude in this country have been energised, and the negative Tories are humiliated – their arrogant stuffing has been completely knocked out of them. The obnoxious “Sir” Lynton Crosby and his negative campaigning tactics are discredited, and no longer will Crosby ever been seen as the masterly campaign wizard again.
It’s all down hill for the Tories from now on. Theresa May was the unity candidate who was supposed to stop the Conservative Party tearing itself apart. Yet her reputation lies in tatters, and whilst the Tories will rally round to cling to office, none of them will really have any faith in her and trust her. If the buffoon that is Boris Johnson takes over he will face great opposition from within the Conservative Party itself, and the Tories will lurch from one self-induced pratfall to the next.
Hopefully when I go out on my local patch today I’ll hear a Green Woodpecker yaffling, and I know who it will be laughing at as it scoffs the ants. When I hear the Cuckoos, I will know who they are saying is cuckoo.
SteB1 – I’m sure there are choppy seas ahead. the boat could be turned over.
But it’s Theresa May that will be in danger of drowning if the boat capsizes. The pundits are saying we are not in new territory because we’ve been here with hung parliaments before. However, this is now very different. The Tories have the self-induced problem of trying to negotiate their tough Brexit strategy. This is why May wanted a huge majority, so she could just stick her fingers in her ears and ignore the critics of this reckless strategy.
Now May is stuck with the responsibility of negotiating Brexit, without the strength to push through what she wants.
All the media political pundits got this election badly wrong because we are in completely new territory. All the analysis based on historical precedent is no longer relevant. The Tories are really going to be scared of Corbyn’s energised Labour, fearing that if they went to the polls again, that they might get wiped out.
SteB1 – true. Thank you.
The DUP may be May’s unreliable lifebelt – how weird!
Yes – a bad sea state and no harbour on the horizon.
While confusion and uncertainty predominate any environmental agenda will be sidelined – in my humble unbiased opinion.
“It’s all down hill for” … everyone
Whilst I feel a real sense of satisfaction that May has received a stunning electoral slap in the face I am angry at her for having created the mess we now find ourselves in. The election result is yet another result of her poor judgement and leadership and we now face a period of significant uncertainty. On the positive side the Tories will not be able to simply push ahead with their hard wrecks-it but will have to yield concessions to other parties in order to push things through Parliament, though quite where the horse-trading on that will lead us I am not sure. With the DUP as the most likely source of support, the desire to maintain an open Irish border is likely to be a major obstacle to the hard Brexit desired by many of the Tory high command. Sadly, I don’t see the environment being given much prominence in all of the manoeuvring – neither the Conservatives nor the DUP place much priority on that.
Jonathan – quite right, I agree.
but let’s be fair, the mess we are in is due to two Tory PMs making bad decisions which were motivated by fixing their internal party problems rather than the public good. The PR PM deserves equal billing with TM the PM.
I agree – I did include CAmeron in my comment initially but deleted him before I posted it. That was purely for the sake of brevity, though – not to let him off the hook. I do think he shares a lot of the blame for getting us into this situation and then just sloping off to go and polish his nest egg.
Mark to be absolutely precise, it’s Croupier Dave and Flutterer May at the Cassino of Chaos who created this appalling mess when they each tried to fix the internal drainage system. Poor UK.
Never mind we have JC and the promise of a sweet scented second coming. Coming soon.
Let the weeds in his allotment flourish while the wily gardener plots and plans his next and, this time, all-conquering campaign.
Correction: It should be ‘wiry’ not ‘wily’ — re Corbyn’s character.
I read your blog yesterday and thought gloomily of the blackbird: ” Yes, but not if a cat gets it”
And today began with some middle of the night cat wrangling, an unidentifiable corpse that twitched as I bagged it. So I boxed it instead, fully expecting it to be properly dead this morning but instead it was out of the box, under the desk and shouting for breakfast. Much like my spirits at the result.
A day of mealworms and tweezers…
having gone to bed highly sceptical about the exit polls at 10.30 I was amazed to wake up and find that they’d carried through to a completely unexpected result. I am amazed and delighted that in this day and age, against the previously successful Lynton Crosby personal attacks and cynical ‘dead cat’ strategies a message that believes in a positive, forward looking, sharing country has won through. It’s an attitude crucial to the future of the environment – something we share, and totally antagonistic to the I’m alright Jack’ attitude of greed & short termism. Yes, there may be a bit of confusion for a while but I’d prefer that to a continued, unopposed Conservative agenda and maybe in whatever chaos that ensues Brexit will die a gentle death before it wrecks this country’s future.
Ah yes, Jeremy Corbyn, the great campaigner. If we could have said that after the referendum, we doubtless wouldn’t be leaving the EU. But his heart wasn’t in it was it – does the leopard ever change its spots?
Bloody hell Mark you don’t do any of your campaigning half measure do you? Jeremy owes you a pint I reckon. A great result indeed even though in Scotland the Tories were resurgent. Not too difficult since they were down to one MP before the GE, but the strength of their comeback eclipsed Labour’s north of the border. Looking forward to your comments on how the green NGOs did or didn’t campaign during this election, probably emphasizing didn’t I imagine – there wasn’t much in terms of quality or quantity was there?
The Green Party needs to get back to the full blooded environmentalism it used to do – I think the world of Caroline Lucas, but even she seems to have reduced it to the standard soundbite ‘climate change is the greatest challenge facing humanity’. That’s not good enough, the fundamental issue that a growing population with growing wants and needs lives on a finite planet needs to be played it puts everything else in context. In spite of austerity we are still incredibly wasteful with resources and thereby money (e.g bottled water, food waste, poorly insulated homes) which doesn’t do fixing our social problems or protecting the natural world any favours.
The Tories really were vile, smearing JC as a terrorist sympathizer was low even for them and I am so glad that back fired. Anyway if I may plug it, a useful start in greater political engagement would be supporting this petition to get the Scottish Government to do a proper economic study on the real costs and benefits of driven grouse shooting – http://www.parliament.scot/GettingInvolved/Petitions/PE01663
We might not have a clue about what’s going to happen but one positive thing to take away is the turn out which at nearly 70% is the highest for 25 years. People are getting involved again which has to be good news.
A great night and a huge relief!
I think several factors lead to Corbyn’s success and May’s embarrassment, and we should take careful note of them. They’re quite well summarised at: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/09/jeremy-corbyn-theresa-may-landslide-manifesto-youth-vote-conservative-campaign
For me, key ones include:
1. An optimistic (even idealistic) manifesto, appealing to people’s better nature,
2. A major push to involve young people (many of whom still have a strong sense of social justice and environmental awareness),
3. Massive use of social media and personal contact (Momentum made tens of thousands of individual phone calls and text messages to get the Labour vote out as well as an ongoing barrage of e-mails, tweets and FB posts).
I think we should try to learn from these in pushing our conservation agendas and trying to mobilise public opinion on wildlife persecution issues.
Yes it was a great night but would have been even greater had Labour won, And unlike Mark I was pleased to see Nick Clegg gone, a final comeuppance for getting into bed with diamond Dave (our worst PM ever?) and screwing both the country and his own party. Well well who would have thought that a terrible Theresa gov’t would be sustained by what many of us have referred to for years as the “proddy bigots” a bunch of British empire, creationist, climate change denying, paramilitary supported and supporting, incompetent liars! True colours and all that!
Offers of free everything appealed to young people, and why not? What they don’t understand is where the money comes from. Personally I don’t think Corbyn will ever get elected; this was a one off to send a message, an important one, but thats it. What were Labour really offering? High unemployment, Killing off our small businesses with huge corporation tax rises (just when we are leaving the EU and need all the employment we can get), free University education for all, further diluting the quality of our graduates (how many end up in a career related to their degrees?). Diane Abbott as Home Secretary? And white washing away all Corbyn and his inner circle’s past?
What we will get hopefully is a softer Brexit, an affordable and decent social care for the elderley package (this was part of T. May’s downfall, she is correct in that it is a time bomb waiting to go off, it needs addressing, but this was electoral political suicide..). If you offer a student free beer he / she will vote for you….
With regards to biodiversity, Labour would not have any money to spare, DGS would continue and not much would change unfortunately. Hopefully the EU biodiversity laws will continue to be part of our legal system (not that there is any enforcement) and a better result based farming subsidy system put in place to replace the EU CAP system (this is already being investigated).
Tim – there is enforcement of EU environmental laws and there is currently the very important option of taking a legal challenge to Europe. Post-Brexit we have no promise from the Tory/DUP coalition that environmental protection will remain – only that some will and some won’t with, as usual, no clarity about which is which. If and when this government removes or ignores environmental legislative protection we, as citizens, will have little comeback against the government.
We might see a better system of spending our money on farming, but we might not. There was nothing in the manifesto of any substance except that for the next five years we are going to keep spending the same amount of money. Hardly a radical post-Brexit agenda is it?
Mark, the situation would be the same whoever got in, we are leaving Europe. Re EU enforcement, the option is going when we have left. At a local level I see tree with TPOs getting cut down, birds nests being destroed so that development is not stalled, peregrine nests being “managed by keepers” annually and nesting ledges removed, hedges being cut now, all the same breaches that we all see – and there are no prosecutions, attempts are made by Police, Councils etc. but the end result is the same.
Tim – no, it wouldn’t. Have you read the manifestos? Labour, Lib Dems and Greens would all maintain (and enhance) the level of protection currently given by EU legislation whereas Conservatives and UKIP won’t. It’s as simple as that.
Of course laws are broken and it is a national government job to enforce them properly. But environmental laws cannot be removed while we are in the EU and only the Left of politics has promised to maintain them once Brexit happens.
Tim – only a very modest increase in Corp Tax and small businesses excluded. At least that’s what I read in t’ manifesto.
Last comment on this Mark – perhaps where we differ is whether or not we believe what is written in Manifestos? The LibDems and Greens can say whatever they want, they are irrelevant. Labour and the Conservatives write Manifestos to win votes (or in the case of T May in this election, to lose votes). But what actually gets implemented afterwards is usually quite different to what the Manifestos have said. Personally I expect the environmental laws to be maintained. Unfortunately these are low priority to most people and not really an election issue for the majority of voters.
I didn’t read any of the Manifestos for the reason noted above. I voted based on who I thought would be best for our economy and would be able to get the best Brexit deal for us.
Tim – that may be where we differ. I’ve read all the manifestos for many years, and I’d say that they have a pretty good record (all parties) of keeping their manifesto promises. That’s why i do read them.
Good news & not so good news:
I awoke with a smile on my face when I found that my MP, Angus Robertson (SNP Moray) with a 10000+ majority had been trounced by young Douglas Ross (Con) who gained a +2000 majority – quite a swing.
What also made my day was next door (Gordon constituency) Smart Alec (Alec Salmond SNP) had also been ejected, again by a Scottish Conservative.
I once voted Labour – but I will not vote Labour again whilst Corbyn leads the Labour Party.
In Scotland, well done to the leadership of three parties: Kezia Dugdale of Scottish Labour, Ruth Davidson of Scottish Conservatives and Willie Rennie leading the Liberal Party in scotland.
The not so good news – SNP is still the largest party in Scotland.
From an environmental point of view SNP are far better than the Tories and you seem happy to vote for a party that only looks after the rich. The only good Tory is a LAVATORY.
SNP have a very poor record – look at the Cairngorm National Park and SNP’s record there with allowing thousands of houses to be built on the Rothimurchus Estate.
I’m delighted to vote Conservative in a two horse race in Moray to rid ourselves of the SNP – here are the results for Moray:
Con 22,637 (47.6%)
SNP 18,478 (38.8%)
Labour 5,208 (10.9%)
Lib Dem 1,078 (2.3&)
Ind 204 (0.4%)
And your comment: “that only looks after the rich” …well I’m not rich nor I suspect are the majority of people that voted Conservative in the UK General Election.
Just to remind you, here are the results of the main parties:
Con 13,667, 213
Lab 12,874,985
Lib Dem 2,371, 772
SNP 972,569
I won’t even bother commenting on your last sentence.