UK and the needless election Jeremy Corbyn
Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn

Marina Hyde Correspondent
The 2017 general election campaign for yesterday’s snap election was Theresa May v Jeremy Corbyn — a battle between two leaders whose personal appeal is what might be euphemised as selective. Or to put it another way, it was the Argentina-West Germany final no one wants to see. Except neither side is even good at football. Gun to the head, you back the Argies. But God, you need to be paralytically self-medicated before kick-off.

The Scottish independence referendum in 2014, the general election in 2015, the EU referendum in 2016: modern Britain seems to exist in a state of permalection.

Even accounting for this, the current poll was the snap election for which there was no acute need — a bit like when Dave Stewart decided to have his appendix out for no reason.

Famously, the Eurythmic was suffering from what he termed Paradise Syndrome — the state of having it all, yet being driven to irrational acts of self-sabotage. In his case, it resulted in his having a perfectly healthy appendix removed in Bangkok. And yet, when Dave had his elective appendectomy, he was living in an LA mansion and married to Siobhan from Bananarama.

This elective election felt like it was taking place while Britain was sleeping in its car and married to Katie Hopkins. This is not Paradise Syndrome. Paradise was lost some time ago. We’ve just spent seven weeks arguing over the fig leaves.

To thank for it all, we had Theresa May — a queenly figure who began the campaign wondering rhetorically: “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the most strong and stable of them all?” By week four, she found the looking glass declining to offer the usual assurances.

Whatever the result (and for what sub-minuscule amount it is worth, I suspect it’ll be an eye-wateringly big win for the Tories), May should no longer suffer from delusions of adequacy.

For many Conservatives in perennial search of a new Iron Lady, she has revealed herself as the Iron Pyrite Lady.

A couple of days after she had called the election, the Sun’s Harry Cole revealed that he’d “had (a) second old-school Tory refer to the prime minister as ‘Mummy’ on the phone today”.

Well. It is not for us to probe the psychosexual dynamics of the Conservative party too closely, but both of them — and who knows how many others? — will now be feeling a rare sense of guilt and shame over those particular fantasies.

Given May’s huge limitations, it was no surprise that she didn’t dare turn up to the TV debates. The political version of a Westworld host, May frequently short-circuited when events forced her off-script, with Tuesday’s rattled announcement about ripping up human rights legislation being a case in point. It was the kind of speech so dangerously irrational it made you want to memorise her face while she was delivering it, just to help police with the efit. For all his many drawbacks — which, it is fair to say, have not gone unexplored by the media — Jeremy Corbyn has somehow fulfilled his assurance to stay calm. On the eve of polling, the self-styled Monsieur Zen remains so. Alas, I fear the Labour party’s doomsday clock has moved at least one minute closer to midnight. But you can’t have everything, can you?

For all his crowds now, however, it is notable that both Corbyn and May failed to meaningfully turn up for the EU referendum campaign last year, and saw the side that they nominally backed lose. To see them offered now as an either/or to the electorate is an unfortunate reminder that the cop-outs have inherited the earth.Post the referendum, Britain is a country in which families and friendships have been deeply affected by the divisions the vote exposed, making the current choice between two people perceived to have wimped out of the strife everyone else went through feel somewhat galling.

Elsewhere, very little attention was paid to the also-rans, who frequently didn’t appear to be even running.

Most of Ukip’s policies read like a side-effect of Paul Nuttall’s PTSD medication (he did six tours in Helmand, didn’t he? The only holder of a WWI VC to do so).

 

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