Occasional on the British Election

(from 2016)

As those who actually know me will attest, I don’t do politics. I remain “neutral” for specific conscientious reasons. BUT - I do enjoy watching human nature. It appears to me that in British politics (and no doubt many other places) vast numbers of people make choices on the physical appearance or characteristics of the politician. That may be very unfair, but tough - that’s the way it is. And political parties choose their leaders, not because they are seen as the overwhelming favourite, but because either no-one else wanted the job, or it was part of some hasty plot to keep somebody else out.

When Margaret Thatcher ruled with an iron handbag, the leader of the opposition for a while was Neil Kinnock. There was one election where, according to the pundits he should have won. But Kinnock was Welsh - VERY Welsh - and though it is rather gentle and understated, there is still a residue of English snobbery about being VERY Welsh. Even more to the point he had the misfortune to fall over on a beach during a photo shoot. The camera shutters gleefully went click, click, click. That fixed him.

A later Labour leader (I’ll spell it the UK way this time) Ed Milliband probably lost as badly as he did because he reminded people of Gromit (from the cartoon series Wallace and Gromit) and that was a cartoonist’s dream. He also had an unfortunate experience with a bacon sandwich in a photo-shoot. Add to that an election gimmick of a huge monolith with carved promises like the Ten Commandments - billed by the press as the Ed-Stone and mercilessly lampooned - and he was done for.

The current Labour leader Jeremy Corbin didn’t want to be leader at all - his forte was very much on the back benches - but he was chosen by default. (Very much like John Major replaced Margaret Thatcher for the Conservatives to keep her rival Michael Hessletine - nicknamed Tarzan - out.) No-body thought Corbin had a hope of doing as well as he did in the present election, and now they have got him they will have trouble replacing him if he doesn’t want to go.

And the issues? Brexit? There was an own goal if ever there was one. The Conservative’s David Cameron had a referendum to keep his party “happy” after they scraped through an election - although at least not having to rely on a coalition as before - confident he would win. And of course the people CHOSE. The Welsh chose to leave Europe - but that was overwhelming a desire to get at Cameron and his party. The vast sums of money thrown at Wales by Europe as a poor country is unlikely to be repeated by a government in London. By the time realization dawns there will of course be someone else on the horizon to blame.

So though I don’t do politics, I do enjoy watching the TV on election night. All the weaving and diving and spinning disasters into sort of successes. The famous who lose their seats. The steely eyed politicians who have miscalculated and as was once memorably said about Judy Garland, “seized defeat from the jaws of victory...”

It annoys my family no end. So I’ll retreat back into my genuine neutrality and see what the papers say. Especially the cartoonists.