Do
you ever take a look back at life and think, “What on Earth happened there?”
Well that’s the politics of the 2010s for you. At the beginning of the decade
we had Gordon Brown as Prime Minister, leading a Labour government, at the end
we have a government led by a man who at the start of the decade was best known
for being stuck on a zip wire and for rugby tackling a small boy (good PM
material right?) So please read on as I take an oversimplified but
comprehensive look back to one of the most momentous political decades that the
United Kingdom has had since the end of the Second World War…
So
2010. We were two years on from the financial crash, we had Gordon Brown in
Downing Street, preparing to enter a general election (that he should have
called three years before to have a better chance of winning…) against David
Cameron and Nick Clegg. Politics was very much, much of muchness back then.
Brown, Cameron and Clegg were essentially all from the same draw – they were
all centrists, and you know what they say, never trust a centrist. In hindsight
though, trusting centrists is probably the way to go to avoid, well to avoid
now.
Britain
was in the recovering phase of the financial crash, but thank goodness we had
the economic genius of Brown who managed to save the world, I mean the banks. Brown handled the crises
exceptionally it has to be said, he acted quickly and swiftly, nationalised the
Northern Rock bank to save it from collapsing and led a global summit, telling
them what to do, which was nice of him as his over-deregulation of the banks
was part of the cause of the problem, fulfilling Labour’s tradition of damaging
the economy. In fairness though, Brown was an excellent Chancellor of the
Exchequer, and it was incredibly unfortunate that his area of expertise is what
ultimately led to his election defeat, that and calling an old woman a ‘bigot’
and an inability to smile on cue.
Brown
as a Prime Minister was one who never stopped. I’m not sure he ever slept. He
was constantly working and shouting and working some more. He wanted to know
everything at all times. He made his office into some kind of news room. Brown
was a lot more collective than Blair in his approach to leadership but was very
tribal. He not only he hated the Tories, but he also hated the left of his
party (hello Corbyn). It wasn’t just ideological. Brown also hated anyone who
had even been in the same room as Tony Blair. He also had running feuds with
MPs in his own party for so long that he had forgotten why he didn’t like them.
They probably shook Blair’s hand or something once.
Brown
did fall into some mishaps along the way. He tried to distance himself from Blair
and the Iraq War, even though Brown was in Blair’s cabinet as his number two
for the whole of the 10-year premiership. Brown’s fear of looking left wing
meant that sometimes he would dabble so close to the other side that Cameron’s
Tories seemed more left wing. It was the Conservatives and the Liberal
Democrats who supported the Gurkhas and Cameron even opposed some tax cuts that
Brown was proposing. Brown was ultimately good in a
crisis, be it foot and mouth, terrorist attacks or the financial crash. Despite
this, the public looked at him next to Cameron and Clegg and thought, “I’m not
voting for this piece of cardboard who has drained our economy” and they voted
Labour out of office (at this rate forever).
But
enough of Brown before this piece becomes as boring as him. The election of
2010 resulted in a hung parliament, the first one since 1974. Clegg was the man
to get onside. Clegg had all the power. Nick Clegg is the political definition
of hero to zero. The papers actually referred to him as the new Churchill in
2010 … that aged well. Despite leading the polls, and Gordon Brown constantly
saying “I agree with Nick” on practically everything, Clegg actually lost
seats. That’s a little Lib Dem tradition that carries on as the decade unfolds.
The Liberal Democrats were born from the Labour Party after the moderates
decided that Michael Foot’s slightly right of Marx’s manifesto was politically
suicidal and formed the Social Democrats, which merged with the dying Liberals.
In hindsight, Clegg should have done something with Labour, Brown’s Labour was
closer to the Liberal Democrats than Cameron’s Conservatives, however, this
wouldn’t have brought Clegg power. Clegg wanted that power. He started playing
Labour and the Tories. He even forced Brown to resign, saying that was the deal
breaker into them going into bed with Labour, and then said “nah” and went to
fellow public school homie, Cameron where they reminisced about the days where
they could have Year 9s as their own personal slaves. This deal breaker was
what made Clegg, and the Lib Dems non-existent by the end of the decade.
After
Brown went to see the Queen for the last time, Cameron was rushed in. Cameron,
a pig enthusiast, restarted the days were the landed gentry ruled the country. Cameron didn’t win the
election outright, but he managed to put the Conservatives on a path that has
seen their vote share increase election by election. In the 1990s the
Conservatives had practically fallen apart. They were all white old rich men
who were arguing about Europe (not anymore though right?), which at that point,
nobody cared about, but the backbench cronies, lead under the opposite of man
of the people, Ian Duncan Cough, a previous leader of the party. The
Conservatives were so out of touch in the 90s, that Blair was able to genuinely
believe that he was some kind of Messiah. Cameron solved this issue by making
the British public believe that he actually didn’t want to kill all the poor.
Europe was still dangling away at the back, and of course as we now know, the
Tory problem became Britain’s problem.
The
Cameron-Clegg Coalition’s main focus was to try and find money, because Labour
had spent it all. There was an actual note left in Number 10 saying “Sorry,
there is no money left”. Cameron and Clegg had to cut public funding, and they
did not do it moderately. Cuts were occurring everywhere, only the NHS was safe,
which continued to get more money. These cuts later allowed Boris Johnson to
have some popular policies of just bringing everything back that his
predecessors got rid of. Managing the books is something the Conservatives
normally do well at, and it is debatable how successful the policies of the
coalition were, but we do know that for now at least, Britain can actually
spend some money (or at least we are doing it anyway), so there must have been
some good somewhere in the mess of austerity. Let’s forget the fact that
government borrowing that was meant to be cut has now doubled in the last 10
years…
The
coalition was also responsible for the Fixed Terms Parliament Act, the biggest
political joke until Change UK. The idea of this was to ensure that neither
Cameron nor Clegg pulled the plug on their coalition, allowing Cameron
ultimately to take most of the duvet. The Fixed Terms Parliament Act was meant
to stop Prime Ministers from holding election when they want to, under the
royal prerogative powers given to them by the Queen. The Act ensures that there
can only be an election every 5 years. Since the 2011 Fixed Terms Parliament
Act there were 3 elections before 2020, so you can clearly see that it worked
well. The Fixed Terms Parliament Act was the only thing that allowed Boris to
remain PM even though he wanted a general election, and had the opposition been
united, could have resulted in alternative government. More on this later.
On
the other side of the benches, Labour had to choose a new leader. Will it be
someone charismatic, a centrist who insists on high fiving members of the
public like he is in some kind of boy band? No, it’s not another Blair, its
Wallace from Wallace and Grommit. Ed Miliband running for Labour leadership
took the old age feud of the Labour Party to a whole new level, because now it
was brother vs brother. David Miliband, Brown’s foreign secretary, had been a
favourite for a while for MPs and members but “Red Ed” was beloved by the trade
unions and they got him in. Ed Miliband then went around distancing himself
from Blair and Brown, despite the fact that they actually were mostly
successful in their aims and started flirting with the proper left. This is not
what brought him down though, oh no. It was that bacon sandwich. Miliband was
unable to eat a bacon sandwich, so the British Public said, no you are not
“tough-a-nut” and told him to take his Edstone and bog off.
In
case you have not been conscious this last decade, referenda started to become
a thing, and probably died this last decade as well. Firstly, in 2011 with the
Alternate Vote referendum. This was about First Past the Post. Everyone cares
about FPTP right? Well, it turns out, only 42% care enough to actually vote in
a referendum on it. This came about because the Liberal Democrats were fed up
that they got less seats than their proportional vote share. This was in the
days when the Liberal Democrats actually valued democracy, and their cause was
justified. First Past the Post is undemocratic, there is no question about that,
and smaller parties are hard done by in the system. It does have its merits
though, as it actually allows governance, a luxury that many European nations
don’t have. This could be an article in itself so I won’t delve into any more
of the arguments but ultimately the public wanted to keep First Past the Post,
probably because they didn’t understand what AV was, because most of the
British Public didn’t do Government and Politics for A level.
The
other referendum in the coalition government was the Scottish independence
referendum. This was everyone vs Salmond and Sturgeon, oh and Sean Connery.
Scotland joined the UK in 1707, and now 300 years on, some of them had had
enough. They didn’t like the fact that they got more money from England than
they gave in, they didn’t like the fact they were overrepresented by MP per
person in the House of Commons and they didn’t like the fact that they could
vote on English laws, but English MPs couldn’t vote on Scotland laws. What they
did like was the St. Andrews’ cross and independence, whatever the cost. The
referendum was granted due to the growing political pressure after the SNP won
a majority in Holyrood. This referendum was, everybody with me, “a once in a
generation vote” (by the way a generation is longer than 6 years). The
Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour (who had a position on this issue
back then) all supported Scotland remaining, and the SNP supported an
independent Scotland. The Scottish decided that they wanted to be Scottish and
British and European (oh wait) and voted 55% to stay in the union. Everyone
accepted the result and that was that … But not for long, because one of the
factors for why some Scots decided to vote to stay in the UK was because they
were told that they could not be members of the European Union if they voted to
leave. Basically, as per most things, anything that was achieved was undone on
23rd June 2016. In seriousness, this is a legitimate concern,
and one that will have to be addressed at some point. Boris has put it under
the carpet for now, but Nicola Sturgeon is not someone who you can easily hide,
as the BBC loves her.
Now
before we move onto the next election of the decade, we have to start talking
about UKIP. UKIP before this decade were just ‘a bunch of fruit cakes, loonies
and closet racists’ in the words of David Cameron, and now there are a bunch of
fruit cakes, loonies and open racists (the current leader, Patricia Mountain
(come on, of course you know Patricia Mountain!) actually said “other racist
parties” in an interview). In between these two stages, UKIP gained a following
because of Nigel Farage, the only major politician to survive this turbulent
decade of events. UKIP won the European Elections in 2014, and two
by-elections. Ian Duncan Smith must have been having a field day because now
the people of the UK actually started talking about Europe. The old arguments
of unelected bureaucrats taking our fish was replaced with the immigrants. You
name it, the immigrants could be blamed. This bothered Cameron, because
although he didn’t really like the EU, he wasn’t a massive fan of racism, which
was a problem for him, because some people in his party quite liked it. The Conservatives
normally won the European Elections but now they were third. Cameron was
worried that UKIP could result in him losing his power in 2015, so inserted the
pledge to have a referendum on the issue in his manifesto so he could win it
and shut them up. He’d already got his preferred choice in two referendums.
So
here comes the 2015 general election and Cameron defied everyone and won it
outright. The few Conservative voters who decided to get on the “Keep ‘em out”
brigade of UKIP were replaced by the right leaning Liberal Democrats who
thought that voting Conservative and Liberal Democrat were essentially the same
after Clegg sold his party out by backing the rise in tuition fees. They fell
victim to the ‘black widow affect’, where any good policy was placed to the
Tories, and any bad policy was put on the Lib Dems. The Liberal Democrats did
betray their members with tuition fees but they did do solid work behind the
scenes, such as the prevention of child benefit cuts, but this was not seen by
the public who just like to get on one big angry band wagon. The other Lib Dems
decided to back Labour, which also lost supporters to UKIP. The Liberal
Democrats were obliterated. They went from 57 MPs to 8. The Liberal Democrats
became essentially, Nick Clegg and his dog. You could count the number of Liberal
Democrats on your hands, and they were just in government! The election also
saw the Green Party come to the attention of the media, although at this stage
the climate crises didn’t matter because of ‘em immigrants. The SNP thought
they would have a go at making Scotland a single party state by taking all but
three of the seats in Scotland. Cameron’s surprise majority meant that he had
to follow through with his pledge of allowing a referendum on Europe.
With
a second Labour defeat (plenty more to come), Ed Miliband resigned as leader of
the Labour Party. The race to succeed him looked to between Andy Burnham and
Yvette Cooper, but to balance all factions of the party, a group of Labour MPs
decided to nominate Jeremy Corbyn, a decision that Margaret Beckett later said
was the biggest mistake of her political career because he went on to win, with
the help of Conservative supporters joining Labour and voting for him. Tony
Blair had introduced moderate politics, politics of the centre, right wing
economics with left wing social policy. Corbyn is someone who thinks he is in
1917 Russia and there needs to be an October revolution. In fact, the two could
not be more opposite despite being from the same party. Blair was likeable,
Corbyn is unlikeable, Blair was charismatic Mr Establishment, Corbyn is
uncharismatic Mr Backbench, Blair knows what the people want, Corbyn appears to
not, Blair likes to kill innocent Iraqi citizens, Corbyn does not. Corbyn and
his former lover Diane Abbott had been on a motorcycle trip around Communist
Europe, and instead of seeing it and thinking, “Gosh, there are lot of poor
people here, that’s not good”, they thought “let’s bring this to the UK”. Now,
Corbyn is not a communist, but he does believe the state should own the internet,
so think of that what you will. Corbyn is on the left of the party, as far as
you can possibly go and ironically had spent much of his time in politics
voting against his own party and teaming up with the Tories on matters of the
EU and free-trade; he now had to lead it. Thing is, as most Labour MPs are not
as extreme as him and don’t hang out with terrorists, this was not going to
ever be easy for “Zionists have no sense of English
With
the Liberal Democrats hanging onto Parliament by a thin as a piece of string,
Clegg resigned, leading a grand total of 7 people that could replace him. The
Liberal Democrats selected Tim Farron, an evangelical Christian who thinks Gay
sex is a sin, so he fitted in very well with the rest of the liberals, he later
wanted to ignore the result of the EU referendum, so he was also a great
democrat. Farron did, in credit, realise that he wasn’t best fit to lead a
party where he opposes both of its named parts and did later resign.
Still
reading? Good because everything so far has been
background reading to what is yet to come. So as mentioned, Cameron gained a
majority, and so the promised referendum now had to occur. Cameron was riding
high, winning an election and a referendum and thought that he could win the
next one. First though, he decided to enter negotiations with the EU commission
to change the relationship between the country and power bloc. He got promises
that the UK would never have to join the Euro or some kind of United States of
Europe, but that was about it. He whizzed off around Europe and achieved
nothing whilst pretending he had got some kind of golden deal. It was this
position that was going to go up against Leave.
This
referendum was to be an all-out political war. This wasn’t Conservative vs
Labour, this was Stronger in Europe vs Vote Leave. Traditional party politics
went out the window in the Spring of 2016 and did not return until the end of
the decade. Most politicians backed remain, some more enthusiastically than
others, however, no one wanted to take the mantlepiece of leading the remain
side because for some reason it wasn’t perceived to be ‘cool’. Cameron decided
to take the lead whilst Corbyn decided to not really do anything at all. Maybe
this was because he actually supported leave, as he had voted against the
European Union in every single bill that had ever gone to the House of Commons
regarding it. Britain Stronger in Europe had a load of big beasts supporting
it. Cameron, Osborne, Caroline Lucas, Danny Alexander, Damien Green and Lord
Mandelson led the campaign with far more widespread following. Vote Leave was
at first lacking in its big beasts. Michael Gove and Gilesa Stuart became the
leaders of Vote Leave, one from Conservatives and one from Labour. Vote Leave
also contained members of moderate UKIP supporters (if they exist) and Green
Party supporters. Boris Johnson’s backing for Vote Leave made them have their
real personality. Boris was never a hardline Eurosceptic, but he felt that the
political tide was on the march for leave, and even if they lost, it would do
him good to back stab his friend Cameron and replace him as king of the Tories
later on. Vote Leave had one problem in campaign strategy. They had Nigel
Farage and the fruitcakes to deal with. ‘Sensible’ Eurosceptics, the ones that
cared about the fish, were worried about Farage and his gang who cared greatly
about ’em immigrants and worried it would tarnish their image, so Farage was
not allowed to be part of the Vote Leave campaign. Farage therefore founded his
own movement, Leave.EU. This allowed the dodgy racist campaigns to be done,
without it looking bad on members of Parliament. Not that the main campaign was
guilty of any misgivings, need I say more about that bus…
The
referendum was dirty on both sides, as Andrew Neil puts it, both were playing
on illogical arguments. Not everyone in Britain was going to die if we left the
EU, and likewise Britain was not under some kind of imperial rule from
Brussels. What really was awful about the campaign was the brutal murder of Jo
Cox, Labour MP for Batley and Spen. Cox was a good human being who ultimately
gave her life to fight for the causes she believed in. The referendum had spun
anger into Britain, and it claimed lives.
Then
came the big decider, on 23rd June 2016, Britain became the
first country to vote to leave the European Union. All political parties
accepted the result, and the process to begin to leave was about to begin.
However, first their needed to be some party management. Cameron took one look
at the mess he created and decided to do a runner to the tune of Winnie the
Pooh. It was like damaging a house
at a party and not doing anything to help clear up. On the other side of the
commons chamber, Labour, a generally more passionate EU supporting party at the
current time, were furious that their leader had done very little to support
the movement and allowing the referendum to be seen as a Tory civil war rather
than everyone vs the political fringe.
With
Cameron off to put his trotters up, the race to succeed him began. With Osborne
also selling his credentials to Brussels, he was no longer in the running to be
Cameron’s successor as it had been suspected. It was now between Boris and May.
Theresa May had kept her head oddly quiet during the campaign, backing remain
but doing very little to support it (I wonder why?). The battle between Boris
and May of course though never happened. Gove, in his extreme wisdom, decided to
knife Boris 40 minutes before nominations close and run himself, despite being
Boris’ campaign manager. Boris therefore decided not to run because of the
split support between the two. May wiped the flaw with the opponents, including
Gove, with Leadsom being the last surviving competitor against her, but she
dropped out because she got lampooned by saying that she would make a better PM
because she had children (10/10 logic there).
Labour
started turning on their leader. Corbyn had a confidence motion and only 40 of
his MPs backed him out of 232. The Parliamentary Labour Party now had to pick
their challenger and they decided to pick… Owen Smith. Yes, Owen Smith, the
well-known Labour MP. The Labour Party managed to challenge the uncharismatic
Corbyn with someone even more insufferable. Corbyn managed to secure his
position with an even larger landslide and then continued his drive to make the
Labour Party a little less red rose and a little more hammer and sickle.
So,
Theresa May was now in charge of the Conservatives and was responsible for
triggering Article 50, which was backed by the Conservatives and Labour and to
negotiate with the EU. May sacked Osborne and appointed Boris Johnson as
foreign secretary. Boris would later go on to make a right old pig’s ear of the
whole thing and incredibly fulfil his outward persona as a blundering idiot who
called the President of Turkey something that nearly rhymes with Ankara. The
Brexit negotiations became a total and utter nightmare. Vote Leave was such a
coalition of chaos (if you pardon the pun) that no one could agree what the
definition of leave meant. Do we remain in the customs union? Do we follow the
European Court of Justice etc etc? Brexit means Brexit. May knew that there
were going to be some difficulties in finding a deal that pleases everyone,
with even a small rebellion resulting in a defeat as she only inherited a
majority of 4 from Cameron. With polls as high as 50% for the Tories and Labour
mellowing in the background, May called an election. The worst decision she
could possibly make.
The
2017 General election was the biggest turnaround ever. May committed political
suicide. The campaign based themselves on May and her ‘strong and stable’
leadership. Thing is you can’t base a campaign around someone’s personality if
they have no personality. May didn’t even turn up to TV debates. On the other
side of the things, Corbyn was no longer this jumped-up Marxist but was now
cool. He even had his own chant. People actually liked him. He went to
Glastonbury thus socialism must be brilliant, much better than dancing to ABBA.
The Liberal Democrats were in there somewhere, as were UKIP but no one paid
attention to them. This election was meant to be the Brexit election, but
Labour successfully made it about all the things the Tories had damaged since
they came into office. The result of the election was May losing her majority,
being short of 9 seats, and having to rely on the DUP.
The
DUP are the crazy party from Northern Ireland. Imagine a party of Jacob
Rees-Moggs with Irish accents and that’s the DUP. To get anything through the
House of Commons, May had to rely on their backing and in return she had to
give them a lot of money. In normal circumstances, the DUP are irrelevant, like
the Lib Dems, but now they had a say. They had to be won over. Brexit had to be
the Brexit they wanted, but also it had to be the Brexit of the EU-cuddlers
like Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve.
Elsewhere,
the Lib Dems gained a new leader. The young, vibrant liberal party now had a
70-something-year-old Vince Cable in charge. UKIP also changed leaders. After
Nuttall, they went to Henry Bolton, who had an affair with a racist, and then
he was replaced by Gerald Batten, a racist who then was replaced by Dick Braine
who was also a racist who was sacked for corruption. UKIP, as ever, is a barrel
of laughs. One of their members literally said they were the Black Death. You can’t make that stuff up. At least they
are being honest…
Brexit
went ahead and eventually May got a deal, the Chequers agreement. Despite the
whole cabinet agreeing to it, David Davis and Boris Johnson later resigned over
it. It looked like a challenge to May might happen, but why would you want to
be the captain of a sinking ship. Then the withdrawal agreement came through
and Dominic Raab and Esther McVey jumped ship. Rees-Mogg then challenged May in
a vote of no confidence, which she won 200-117, so a close one but a lot more
secure than Corbyn’s in 2016. She was walking on thin ice, and everyone, friend
or foe, were willing to take a pickaxe to her.
February
2019 saw the creation of the Independents, I mean the Independent Group, I mean
Change.org, I mean Change UK – the Independent Group. 8 members of Labour were
fed up of Labour not opposing Brexit and others like Luciana Burger did not
feel safe due to antisemitism. 3 Conservatives also were opposed to Brexit and
joined the party. This was a coalition of stopping Brexit, but they did not
have the tarnished image of the Lib Dems. Instead they had nothing. They didn’t
even have a leader. They just sort of sat there and did nothing. The fact that
they had nothing in common other than disliking Brexit, including the fact they
disagreed on what to do, showed the fact that this splinter group was going to
be just like the rest of them in history, a fizzled out waste of time that are
exciting for mere blink of an eye.
Then
came the first meaningful vote on the deal. The biggest defeat in the 800-year
history of British parliamentary democracy. It was a whopping 432-202 defeat.
Theresa May had lost people on all fronts. Both remainers and leavers were
celebrating on Parliament Square. May did not receive the backing of the Tory
remainers led by Grieve, nor the leavers under Rees-Mogg. The DUP did not back
it. Labour, except for three MPs, did not back it. The Lib Dems, SNP, Plaid
Cmyru all did not back it out of principle that they did not think that we
should even have a deal anyway because the EU is awesome and is the saviour to
all our problems. With the vote going through, it meant no deal, because no
deal is better than a bad deal. Though of course no one actually believes that,
so we extended the deal (oh wait, some actually do believe that not having a
deal is actually a good thing – don’t listen to those experts remember).
Then
a second meaningful vote came, then a third, each doing slightly better than
the last, but still making May look like a zombie as well as a robot. She was
trying to bake a cake before actually having all the ingredients. May wanted to
please everyone, but no one could agree on what they wanted. They all knew what
they didn’t want but not what they wanted. Every indicative vote that came
through saw the noes have it. There was not one consensus. May was stuck. She
had set out red lines. Red lines that could not be crossed. She tried reaching
out to the opposition to find a deal but found that hard as there was no deal
better than staying in the EU for the majority of them. May’s
final manoeuvre to allow a vote for a people’s vote on her deal for
the forth meaningful vote was enough for her party and they began to
try and oust her, breaking their own rules. One thing to note about the Tories
– they are their own worst enemies. More leaders of the Conservatives have been
bought down by those behind them than those opposite them. They are vultures
who gobble each other up, and now it was almost May’s turn, but something got
in the way first.
As we
were still in the European Union we had to enter into the even more pointless
contest of the European Elections. UKIP had self-destructed with minor racists
abandoning the Islam-obsessed Gerald Batten’s leadership and Farage formed the
Brexit Party – the Nigel Farage show. All the old favourites from the crazy
fringes of politics were coming out to play like Ann Widdecombe and the actual
communist (not Corbyn style leftie, but proper Marx loving fanatic) Claire Fox.
The Brexit Party sort of came out of nowhere and topped the polls. The Liberal
Democrats came second. Labour third. Greens fourth and the Tories a mere 5th.
With securing just over 10% of the vote it was the worst electoral defeat for
the Conservatives since 1834 – and the mention of those corn laws was something
I imagine no political pundit would have guessed at the beginning of the
decade. Before the announcements on who won, May had already done her
resignation speech in advance. May was gone in June and it was now time to find
a successor.
Firstly,
it’s important to talk about the other parties before going to the big Tory
beast. UKIP, who had topped the 2014 European Elections, now came sixth and
lost all their seats. They are now practically non-existent and politically
insignificant to the point of them just being a bunch of angry racists who
think Farage doesn’t hate Muslims enough. Change UK went into meltdown and the
splitters split. Anna Soubry believed that they actually had a chance despite
coming seventh and carried on, whilst the others thought that the Liberal
Democrats actually did quite well as people had temporarily forgotten the fact
that they had sold their voters in favour of power in the coalition. The Green
Party did well out of Extinction Rebellion, but as ever, the people got bored
of the fact the world was literally roasting, and the Greens success was only
temporary. It is a wonder how hot its going to have to get before the climate
emergency does become a chief concern. The Liberal Democrats replaced Vince
Cable with a far younger and party-image fitting, Jo Swinson, someone who had
dodgy dealings with fracking companies but that can be overlooked for the
overarching value that Britain must remain in the European Union. Liberal
Democrats became a hot spot for left-leaning Europhiles that didn’t like Marx
and for rich old Tories that wanted to easily access their holiday home in
Nice.
Labour
were in a mess when it came to the European elections, but that is a given
nowadays. The leadership were insisted that they were committed to a Brexit
deal, a different Brexit deal to the failed one that May had negotiated. At the
same time, people like Lord Adonis were saying that Labour were party for
remain. So which one was it? Thing is no one knew, not even the Labour Party,
not even the cabinet. The key thing that happened here is that the Liberal
Democrats took the remain mantle piece, and Labour now saw them as they key
ones to upseat, which it turns out means they abandoned their leave voters.
Labour have been a coalition of London Metropolitan Remain loving middle
classes and Northern Working Class Britain Monarchy enthusiasts and after a
century, this was starting to crumble away, all as a result of the big wrecking
ball of politics, Brexit. Labour decided from this point that a people’s vote
was the way forward, which in turn made the Liberal Democrats go even more
pro-European…
The
Conservatives were however more in a mess and May, although she had been
politically dead for good few months, finally bowed out. And now it was time
for another Conservative leadership contest. Despite May having an almost
impossible task, it seemed anyone who had even turned up to a Conservative
Party Conference felt they could do a better job. People like Kit Malthouse and
James Cleverly, neither of which had got particularly far in politics joined
in. Sam Gyimah decided he was going to run advocating a second referendum.
Dominic Grieve probably egged him onto do it as a sort of funny joke because it
couldn’t have been serious. Andrea “I’m a better leader because I’m a mother”
Leadsom had another pop too. Of course, there is the new Blair wannabee, Rory
Stewart, someone so fantastical that he can take a selfie without using his
hands. Stewart went around campaigning to members of the public, despite the
fact – and this is one of the biggest complaints about the whole leadership
process – they had no say.
The
final three got down to Gove, Hunt and Johnson. The final two were looking to
be Gove and Johnson but to avoid a Vote Leave civil war, Theresa In Trousers
Hunt got in there. Boris Johnson, known for his cavalier attitude to the truth,
was trusted by Tory party members to lead the party. Many of May’s former
allies now became the very rebels that Boris himself was part of.
Now
it was crunch time (as if it wasn’t before). Johnson had pledged to die in a
ditch if Brexit did not happen on 31stOctober. He said
this standing in front of army of police as if he was part of some sort of
authoritarian regime, of which he would deny, by subsequently shutting
parliament down illegally. Parliament had to return as the courts had ruled it
so, and the Remain MPs united to block a no-deal exit. Boris decided to kick
out 21 Conservative MPs from his party for backing the rebel amendment,
including former Chancellors, Kenneth Clarke and Philip Hammond and Winston
Churchill’s grandson, Sir Nicholas Soames. Yes, Philip Hammond, previously
known for his love of spreadsheets (me too, Phil, me too) had now become a
fiery no-nonsense rebel. The remain side now had the potential numbers to force
through a people’s vote, but because the Lib Dems and Change UK (which still
existed at this point) did not like Magic Grandad Corbyn, they could not unite.
Then came the election.
The
2019 General Election was dubbed the Brexit Election. This was a clear Brexit
message from the Tories, a clear Stop Brexit from the Lib Dems and a clear ‘we
will renegotiate a Brexit deal with the EU in 3 months and have another
referendum, which we will definitely respect this time, in 6 months’ policy
from the Labour Party. Labour’s manifesto became a wish-list and the Tories
pledged to reverse all the damage they had caused to the country in
the last 10 years and can now suddenly spend all the money that they said they
could not spend for all their previous years in government. They appealed to
the traditional leave seats of Labour and promised them bread and butter
policies like more police officers and nurses, though some dubious statistics
were involved. Boris Johnson got a landslide victory, the Labour party got
their worst defeat since the 1930’s and the Liberal Democrats lost their leader.
Jo Swinson, who said she could be a PM, lost her seat to the SNP, and Nicola
Sturgeon was certainly happy about that.
Following
the election, Boris Johnson assembled a series of noblisse oblige polices, the
most left wing Tory manifesto of memory (but still including cabinet ministers
who like the death penalty), Corbyn finally decided to bow out and the Liberal
Democrats don’t know if there is enough of them to have a leader.
So,
there we have it, 10 years of absolute political mayhem. With the coronavirus
causing the worst health and economic crises for 100 years, the next decade is
likely to be very interesting indeed.
