Current Affairs

So the liberals have spent the first week charming the British public with their leaders antics. Falling off paddle boards, going down water slides and running a boat past Richi Sunak, while he is knee deep in a media blitz. But the serious politicians have not had it easy, Richi Sunak’s exit sign and Titanic trip all point to an incompetence that must drive the professionals he works with into an early grave of stupidity. The most serious of the politicians on show is Keir Stammer, he is so careful about his appearance and how he relates to the electorate, it seems he is walking on egg shells.

But that is the nature of British politics and politicians, they stand in an election and in all seriousness they move the language of the party to an agenda that envelopes part – if not all their arguments. If you have a child that will be a teenager in the near future, you will have heard them complaining that they now have to do national service, “that bloody nonsense,” argued Nigel Farage, a far right figure and to a degree the architect of Brexit. “They are trying to neutralise the right he argues.” So the argument that most worries the Tories is the movement to the right of part of their voters demographics.

The egg shells were slightly broken by arguments of who will be standing in Hackney. Diane Abbott trapped the Labour leadership into a howler, she complained that she had not yet heard whether she would be allowed to stand. The one time bed fellow of Jeremy Corbin was cleared of the anti-Semitic language that had landed her in a class that explained the elements of her arguments silliness, but though she had been cleared months previously, nobody really wanted her to know in case she stood once again for her seat. Keir Starmer, worried about the visualisation and voices of the left was indecisive and allowed a media blitz to rain on his carefully orchestrated campaign. But the question of whether Diane Abbott should stand again, was not really should she, but more pointedly, why shouldn’t she.

The Greens have been silent, their success in the council elections seems to be enough for them, but their long time leader is finally quitting parliament and a new voice needs to be found. An interesting interview with a Green economist slightly polluted the water for them. He argued that GDP was not necessarily an important element to how an economy was doing, “it is the wellness of the general population, getting rid of pollutants and bringing an agenda that brings value to the people.” A nice thought, but this election is about change and the ability to change the stagnation that has fallen on the British economy since Brexit, the war in Ukraine and Liz Truss’ short tenure as prime minister, with such radical policies that she lost £50 billion pounds on the stock market in a day, after the radical mini budget she and her chancellor had tried to push on the British people and the city of London.

“We are moving into an uncertain period,” was the rallying cry of Richi Sunak. Pointedly he marked out the war in Ukraine and the aggression China is demonstrating across the Taiwan Straits. The elephant in the room was whether Trump, newly convicted, would win the presidency in the United States. His idea of bringing the war to an end in Ukraine and his dismissal of the values that NATO holds for the Europeans, means that the US electioneering is being watched closely. “Trust us,” Sunak argued. But reports that the British military had been hollowed out hit the headlines. Budgets had been tightened up on procurement, the army was smaller, the RAF had fewer aircraft and the Navy had ships that it didn’t have the manpower to man. But the most serious argument came from the army, it had become the smallest it had been since the Napoleonic wars. Richi Sunak calmed the fears of the teenagers, the brightest and the best would be pulled into the military for a year and the rest would volunteer for one weekend a month for a year.

Keir Starmer argued that military spending would increase to 2.5% to bring the military back up to strength. It demonstrated that Labour were serious about defence, but the problems lay elsewhere. The shadow chancellor in a media blitz admitted that she could not promise anything in the near future, as the economy was in a precarious position. The message was out and the egg shells that Labour were stepping on was to convince a weary electorate, tired of the infighting, Brexit and prime ministers lasting as long as an Ice Berg lettuce was a concern for those fighting for a different argument.

At the start of the election campaign in Britain, Labour led the Tories by 20%, but by the end of the week, the opinion polls predicted that Labour had a 28% lead. But the headlines were more about those leaving parliament, the originators of Brexit were leaving the House and the biggest name to go was Michael Gove. An ambitious animal who moved the narrative and pulled the carpet from under those in power. His ambitions thwarted by his unpopularity and the unpopularity of his party. He like eighty others decided that they could not make Brexit work and have moved onto other jobs, or in the case of some, sky diving, motorcycles and fast catamarans.

The anger with the politicians among the British people is slowly being placated by the antics of the Liberals, who are arguing for clean water, unpolluted rivers and focussing on the real concerns of the electorate. But at the same time they are up to high jinks, which not only amuses the electorate but also takes some of the sting out of the worries of the British people who view the economy, house prices and worries about the future, weighs them down. The Liberals have a cheap campaign that comes with the cost of paddle board rental, bicycles running away downhill and the occasional favour to borrow a boat, which they fill with posters and supporters who cruise down the Thames past a prime minister in full pitch, as the cameras follow the boat marketing the Liberals. Cheap and clever in its inception.

The Scottish nationalists couldn’t have got off to a worse start. They demonstrated their unpreparedness and demonstrated that they could not put together an argument for a week, when they launched. Nicola Sturgeon hit the headlines as her husband was arrested and the battle bus that had been so quietly parked on the drive of Sturgeons husbands mother was nowhere to be seen. But the big story was the missing electoral funds for the independence rallies that never happened. Further stories about the crisis in the NHS and crumbling schools and infrastructure were deflected as Swinney relaunched their campaign.

But it is the parties that have been in power for sometime in England, Scotland and Wales, which has highlighted the worrying complacency of the big hitters. Vaughan Gething in Wales is embroiled in a scandal and Plaid Cymru will not join the Labour party in government until he is gone. The elections fall on the weekend of the Euros and though England and Scotland have made it through, the Prime Ministers is clueless about football. There is nothing quite like football to alienate a nation and Sunak did just that, when asking Welsh voters whether they were looking forward to the tournament when their team did not quite qualify. But as Clinton is quoted in the past as saying “it is the economy stupid,” and for the Welsh it is steel making and for their farmers it is the cheap imports that will be coming from Australia, New Zealand and Brazil.

It is not winning the election that most concerns the Tories, it is the Reform party. This ultra right party that is said to have popular support amongst the older demographic, is worrying the Tories who think it will split their vote in key seats. The will he won’t he candidacy of the leader of Reform Nigel Farage, was on Question Time on the BBC. In indignity he asked why he had been invited on? A steely Fiona Bruce looked him in the eye and said, “you weren’t invited, we invited Lee Anderson.” Farage declared he had more important things to do, which was to support Trump to be re-elected in the United States. The media laughed at him and declared him a coward for not running for an eighth time in the British general election after his failures with UKIP. Farage declared that he would once again stand for parliament after a media storm that picked up on the ugliness of his comments about British Asians, he now hopes he will get support from the electorate in Clacton and finally win a seat in parliament.

There is nothing quite like an election in Britain, the two leading parties arm themselves with PR professionals and battle buses that cruise the length of Britain to get the leaders noticed by the electorate. But this election from its start has been jaded. From the start the Tories have been undone by their own antics, whether it is the Prime Minister declaring the start of the election in the pouring rain, standing under an exit sign or visiting the yard that built the Titanic, there is apathy. The promises of the Tories for a better Britain have been undone by their governance for the past fifteen years and that there have been four different leaders of the party, all with a different relationship with the people. Labour have been on a charm offensive, but they too have been fighting an internal civil war and the voters are that little bit wary of a party that crashed the last election, which led to some soul searching for a party that was deemed anti-Semitic and led by someone the British people were wary of. How these elections go down also depends on how well the home teams do in the Euros…