What is happening?

What is happening in British politics?

Who the hell knows? Well this should be a little round up of how I have viewed the last few weeks and in particular the election on 8 June 2017. Actually, let's start at the beginning shall we? Brexit.

What is Brexit?

A good question. To Theresa May, Brexit means Brexit. So that clears that up. 

In reality this is what happened. In 2015, following five years of coalition between the Conservatives (Tories) and the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems), there was a General Election. The coalition was formed because the Tories didn't get enough votes to win a majority and take power back after 18 years of Labour Governments. They needed to team up with the Lib Dems to make them the most powerful in the House of Commons and so the then leader of the Tories, David Cameron, became Prime Minister and the then leader of the Lib Dems, Nick Clegg, became Deputy Prime Minister. There was an agreement in the House of Commons that elections would now be held every five years instead of every 3-5 years and that to have one earlier than that would need an agreement from all parties in the House. This is important to note for later.

Anyway, 2015 rolls around and the country is due for another General Election. We all go to the polls and, for some reason, the Tories now get in with a majority and form a Government on their own. This is where things start getting really stupid.

The whole election campaign was geared up to appeasing the extreme right of the Tory Party. There were concerns that these extreme back-benchers would not support Cameron and the way to win them round, and to steal votes off of the UK Independence Party (UKIP) was to promise a referendum on whether or not Britain should stay part of the European Union.

UKIP are extreme right wing and have dodgy views on Muslims and freedom of movement around the world. They are also convinced that Britain still has an empire (they must do otherwise where do they think all of our money comes from if not the EU?). The EU was formed nearly 40 years ago and IS democratic (despite what the haters say as you do elect your Members of European Parliament (MEPs)) and also DOES NOT dictate things like how many refugees you should have or that you should only sell straight bananas. It is supposed to be a place that means members can trade with each other (and Britain get's most of its trade done with the EU), means you can work in any member state and works as one big trade body with other places (like China or India). The UK was lucky in the fact that they also had opt outs of things like the Euro so why would you throw all that away? 

For some weird reason UKIP was gaining in popularity in the UK, especially among the working classes. This might be because the Daily Mail and The Sun kept telling them that they were going to lose their job to an Eastern European who would do it for about 50p a day. UKIP were telling them the same bullshit so they were starting to vote for them instead of their traditional party, Labour. It didn't help that the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, was able to bullshit everyone into thinking he was a man of the people by going down the pub for a pint. Before joining UKIP in the early 1990's he was a VERY rich banker in London. Man of the people? Nah.

However, this could also take away from the Tories so they decided to claw a few back and promised a referendum. The only thing was, Cameron didn't actually want to leave the EU! Also, when the results of the General Election came in, the extreme right actually didn't do so well. Any other leader could have turned around and made some bullshit up about the 'tides turning' and 'this not being the right time for a referendum after all'. Not Cameron though. He thought he was personally popular enough with the electorate that no one would vote to actually leave this brilliant thing call the EU.

He was wrong.

On 23 June 2016 we were back at the polls and for some fucking stupid reason the country voted to leave the EU. They believed the right-wing press (Daily Mail and The Sun...again). They believed the side of a fucking bus! Plastered all over the Leave campaign bus (because we travel everywhere on busses in this country apparently) was a slogan about giving £350m a DAY to the EU. Only...this was a lie. We actually get more out of the EU than we put in (in terms of subsidies for things like farming...most farmers voted to leave the EU...turkeys and Christmas springs to mind). 

The other thing was that only about a third of those eligible to vote actually turned out to vote on the day. Of those that did and voted Leave there were loads who said they had used it as a protest vote because they hated Cameron. No one actually believed that the country would vote Leave. They kind of didn't with the low turn-out figures. The split was 52% Leave and 48% Remain (of which I am part of the 48%). Despite these bullshit low figures we are now in the process of leaving the EU. Why though?!

Cameron was so unpopular that he resigned from being PM and fucked off somewhere. Nigel Farage decided he had done enough damage and also fucked off leaving UKIP to choose a new leader, Paul Nuttall, who is basically just a drooling racist (the recent manifesto essentially just wanted to ban the burka). Basically, everyone responsible for the referendum fucked off as soon as it went tits up! 

The Tories had to choose a new supreme leader and they had a few candidates. One turned out to be a total idiot and dropped out because she made a stupid comment about Theresa May not being a mother and another was perennial clown Boris Johnson who had backed the Leave campaign but didn't think it would win. His plan was to lose the referendum but somehow oust Cameron and be supreme leader. He too dropped out of the running. That meant that Theresa May (or Maybot as she has been nicknamed) became supreme leader.

Who is Theresa May?

Theresa May is a vicar's daughter who claims to be a good Christian but became an MP for the Tories. She said her naughtiest thing that she has ever done is run through fields of wheat to piss off farmers (and yet she is a Tory and she has made arms deals with Saudi Arabia). She is now supreme leader and has been nicknamed 'Maybot' because she repeats herself...A LOT! Favourite catchphrases include "Brexit means Brexit" and "Strong and Stable". She is also known for u-turning a lot on her policies.

In October 2016 she said she would not call an early General Election and in April 2017 she called an early General Election. During the General Election she released her Party's manifesto and then took things back (assets over £100,000? pay for your own care...oh and now it is three days later we will put a cap on this after all).

So why was there another General Election then?

Maybot decided to call a General Election because, in April, they were 20+ points ahead in the opinion polls and it looked like the Tories could wipe out Labour. They had the support of the right-wing press (Daily Fail and The S*n, among others) and they felt they couldn't lose. Maybot thought she could get a bigger majority so that the other parties in the House of Commons wouldn't be able to stop her getting her 'Hard Brexit'.

What is a 'Hard Brexit'?

No one knows. Not even Theresa May. It could mean making no deal with the rest of Europe at all though. So no trade deals or anything. It would mean no free movement, no money, nothing. Who knows...?

Back to the General Election thing then. Maybot thought she could wipe out Labour but didn't realise the awesome power of young people!

Who is Jeremy Corbyn?

He is a very left-wing politician who has been an MP for nearly 40 years and was always seen as radical in his own party. Even they didn't think he would be electable, despite Party members voting for him to be leader twice! He has been growing on people for being straight talking (no politician style answers for him) and taking the time to listen to people and act accordingly. He shows real leadership quality and fairness to everyone and that makes him the best thing to happen to Labour for a long time. Since the General Election of 2017 even the dissenters in his own Party have apologised and said they were wrong.

General Election 2017

So the campaigning began and it looked a bit shit for Labour at first as they lost a load of seats in the Local Elections in May. Then the tides turned rapidly.

Maybot refused to actually meet with members of the public. Even attempts to stage this went tits up when she was photographed in a cafe with 'normal voters'. They were all wearing blue rosettes though so they were planted by the Tories. They should have got them to remove the rosettes to make it believable. 

In the last few elections there have been televised leader debates where the leaders from all the main parties get to stand in front of a carefully selected audience who ask them important questions like 'will you start a nuclear war?'. Maybot refused to take part and only appeared at an event jointly held by Sky (partly owned by Rupert Murdoch who also owns The S*n) and state owned Channel 4. This event saw Jeremy Corbyn and Maybot face questions from an audience and then Jeremy Paxman (who used to be a good interviewer but is now a bit shit). All we learned was that one member of the audience became a new hero for shaking his head and visibly saying Maybot was talking 'bollocks' on national TV and that people actually grew to respect Corbyn for taking the time to listen to them.

This all made Maybot out to be the coward she really is. She thought she was popular enough to increase the Tory majority in the House of Commons...that did not happen at all!

Corbyn then pulled the move of the century. He had been saying that if Maybot wouldn't go on a leader debate then he wouldn't either...then he changed his mind. All the party leaders showed up except Maybot. She sent Amber Rudd, her Home Secretary, who had just lost her father. Genius Maybot, now you look like a coward and an arse.

Corbyn also held rallies all over the country where people turned out in their thousands to hear him speak. Even in Tory strongholds people came out to see him (my uncle became a huge fanboy after getting to shake his hand in the Tory heartland of Reading).

The most important thing was that young people got behind Corbyn. Music papers like NME and Kerrang! had Corbyn on their front covers in the week of the election. The biggest movement was #Grime4Corbyn where Grime collectives encouraged their fans to go out and vote for Labour and secure their future.

Basically Maybot underestimated the young. The most shared political posts from the election week came not from the traditional sites like The S*n or The Daily Fail but rather from bloggers like Another Angry Voice. These blog posts were shared all over social media and young people loved that there was finally a voice that represented them. We don't know the final figures yet but we do know there was a surge in young people registering to vote and then actually going to the polls on the day. This is a brilliant thing to see and I hope this momentum lasts. Many young people who voted have turned 18 in the last 12 months and were angry that they couldn't vote in the EU referendum. Many had called for 16 and 17 year olds to be added to the electorate for that referendum because it affects their future and the most likely to vote (and vote leave) were the older generation who will all die because the horrors of leaving come in to force (they clearly hate their grandkids). 

So what was the result of GE17?

Maybot does have the largest party in the House of Commons but not enough to form a majority. A majority is 326+ seats (so just over half the number of the House). Maybot now has decided to make a deal with the right-wing Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) who are from N. Ireland and has an anti-abortion stance (including for rape victims) and is anti-LGBTQ (compared homosexuality to child sex abuse and campaigned against equal marriage). 

Labour is far from being wiped out and has increased the number of seats it holds. They also have a couple of disabled activists as MPs and more LGBTQ MPs than ever before (the good thing is that across all of the parties there are now more women than ever before). Even Tory strongholds turned Red on the night as Chelsea in London went Labour and Canterbury, which had been Tory for around 200 years, turned Labour too. The last result to come in was the traditionally Tory Kensington, but that went Red too!

Now were are left in a period of uncertainty politically. Maybot is deluded enough to think she will still be in power in 5 year's time. The rest of us think she will be out by the end of the day. Only time will tell.

I predict another election and a Labour win. The power has shifted from the right-wing and the traditional press to the young and socially conscious. Keep the momentum going!