Some people are travelling the country throughout this general election with their party leaders and senior politicians, trying to win the fucking thing. I will give a firmly (disgracefully) biased interpretation of all the General Election stories cutting through the fog-of-war, to help them keep a grip. We’re not aiming for ‘first with the news’ but ‘most useful on the bus’ coverage. Lies I made up are highlighted in orange, but are designed to show the general tone of the event.
SNP
OOPS! The SNP has learned, perhaps too late, that linking ‘Toorees” with opposition to independence is a double-edged sword, especially when Ms Davidson is leading the Conservative and Unionist Party so agreeably in the country. Elsie Sturgeon has begun the rather difficult task of decoupling ‘independence’ from ‘anti-Tory’ and as a result is seeing a decoupling of the Scottish electorate from the SNP, particularly in parts of the country where her shrill anti-toryism has stopped cutting through. Scotland is going to be a bloody battlefield yet again – I think that predictions of 12 Tory seats are far-fetched, but if Elsie keeps mentioning the Conservatives more than her own party in every speech…
Labour
The combined efforts of the Communist Party of Britain and the Labour Party got out of Sir Keir Starmer’s way yesterday in order to let him do a big, deeply boring speech about Europe. Then they spent last night contradicting what he had said about Europe. He appeared to accept that free movement was gone, but then last night Labour sources said that free movement wasn’t gone.
Guido is reporting today that Clive Lewis would appear to be in breach of the Representation of the People Act for falsely reporting poll results involving other candidates, so that’s going to be fun.
Conservatives
Theresa May is being urged to bury Boris Johnson, which presumably isn’t too much of an ask. There is a suspicion that his fun, engaging style would be out of keeping with the current approach to the election by the Prime Minister. Quite.
Liberal Democrats
Re-selected David Ward, the allegedly anti-semitic former MP whose views have brought such delight to the community of Bradford. The LibDems have a worse anti-semitism problem than Labour, but they’re jolly good at pretending they haven’t.
Green Party (Northern Ireland) and SDLP
The Greens seem to have tried to sew up a pact with anyone-who-isn’t-a-unionist in South Belfast and elsewhere. They can’t hope to win the South Belfast seat, which is in the hands of Alasdair McDonnell, SDLP. Unfortunately, they didn’t bet upon an INCREDIBLY feisty response from the Alliance Party, and seem shocked to suddenly be involved in actual politics. Dirty game, this.
