The election yesterday did not go the way I would have liked. Large parts of the coverage where people on the losing side being questioned about what happened and I want to get some of my thoughts out of my head, so here they are.
There should not have been an election
The people who really wanted the election were those who said they didn't want it. Boris Johnson stood on the steps of Downing Street declaring he didn't want one, but he was the one person who needed it most. He lost a record number of votes in parliament after coming to power and then purged the moderate wing of his party, meaning he no longer had a majority and that the country did not have a functioning government.
What should have happened at this point was a vote of no confidence that was won by the opposition and an interim government was formed. This was the point at which they had the power and they gave it away by not acting. The main reason it didn't happen is because they didn't have a government in place waiting to take over, which would have triggered an election which might have resulted in no deal. At the point where no deal was off the table, Boris Johnson was able to call the shots and force an election. The opposition should have called a vote of no confidence at that point because the worst that could have happened was the election we go. The best that could have happened was an interim government overseeing a second referendum.
The reasons it didn't happen were possibly naivety. Jo Swinson insisted that an interim government could not have been led by Jeremy Corbyn, and Corbyn insisted that it had to be led by him. This public display of bravado is possibly what caused the other to not back down. Had it been all played out in private, then perhaps an agreement could have been formed around a leader respected on all side.
Lack of leadership
This brings me to a point about a lack of leadership. Corbyn has never been a leader. He's great at inspiring crowds when electioneering but not at leading a party. Partly because it is not his style and partly because he may not have the credibility to bring people in line having rebelled so many times himself. He was definitely not a natural born leader and didn't expect to get the role but he did so because the party membership were desparate for a new message.
Swinson as mentioned I think is a bit naive. She is possibly also tainted by so recently being a part of the coalition government and left-wing voters being unable to stomach voting for what they view as Tory-lite.
In the last 10 years, I think we've had quite a dearth of leadership in politics. The only people I can think of who I would consider holding as a good example of leadership are 2010 vintage Nick Clegg and Nicola Sturgeon. The reason being, they had a very clear message, communicated it well and were able to convince both their own followers and others, thereby increasing their vote share. Neither of them are perfect, but they are better than a large number of others (many of whom I actually like on a personal level).
Corbyn's insistence on labour or nothing
This is something that caused an issue both with forming an interim government, and also with a possible electoral alliance. The Green/Plaid/Lib Dem pact said that they had approached and wanted to work with labour but labour were not willing.
Someone on the analysis last night was saying that perhaps labour cared more about being "right" than about winning. I think this may be true in some ways. There was a reluctance to taint their brand with a pact, and perhaps they doubled down on the nationalisation and people were worried they would nationalise their gran.
Our electoral system
First past the post is a crap system. I live in a super safe Conservative seat and no matter who I vote for, it always feels irrelevant. However, it is not in the interests of the ruling party to change the system so it probably never will be changed. The one opportunity we have for reform was weak and poorly communicated. As there were council elections on the same day, I'm sure people turned up to be given a piece of paper asking them to vote for whether or not they wanted a change they were unaware of or didn't understand and in that situation very few people would vote for the change.
However, with 649 of 650 results declared, the parties who went into yesterday's election favouring a second referendum came out on over half the vote (50.3% - Labour 32.2%, LD 11.5%, SNP 3.9% and Greens 2.7%). Had we had a different electoral system, perhaps we would now have a government committed to a soft Brexit or to remain.
Corbyn's personal brand
I personally like the chap. I find it difficult to dislike someone who tends their allottment and makes jam. However the public perception is vastly different. Reasons for this include smears from conservatives and the press calling him a Marxist (he's not - very few people appear to have read or studied Marx) and a terrorist sympathiser (he's not - he's one of the biggest pacificists on this planet.
Whilst both of these things are untrue, they are scary to people. There has been no real campaign from the left to counter these and Corbyn himself doesn't lower himself to this level.
Reports from labour campaigners last night were that he came up on the door step as a reason to not vote labour.
A "confused" Brexit strategy
Labour's Brexit strategy was actually simple. However, it was only simple come the election. It appeared to shift over time. And whilst it was simple, the media kept insisting that it wasn't. Contrast this with...
A clear message from the conservatives
"Get Brexit done" doesn't really mean anything and appeared to be the answer to any question on any topic that every Conservative candidate was asked during the election. However parroting it repeatedly clearly got through, was a simple, concise and clear message. Add this to...
A core base of conservative voters
There are a core base of conservative voters in this country who will not vote for any other party. And then there are the floating voters. Moderate remain tory voters were maybe less likely to abandon them than leave Labour voters were likely to abandon their party. Couple this with...
An acceptable non-Tory leave vote
The Brexit party standing in labour held seats would have given labour voters an option that they felt they could vote for to express that they wanted to leave the EU without having to vote for the hated Conservative party.
A united conservative party
Having got rid of all the dissenters earlier this year, the conservative party were completely united. Everyone of them had signed up to Johnson's deal with the EU (despite some of them possibly believing it to be worse than Theresa May's deal) and they presented a united front. I don't think that was as true for the labour party - especially on the issue of our status in the EU.
People who aren't as interested in politics as I am
I don't mean this as a slight. I am interested in politics and could give you a good summary of the current situation at any one point in time. I am less interested in I'm A Celebrity, however I would still have views on who I want to win it, the same way that someone who is not really interested in politics may have a view about who they want to win.
Things that I may think of as big important factors to take into consideration - the leaked reports on the trade talks with the US, Johnson repeatedly hiding from scrutiny and the like - may not have had a lot of impact on people who aren't politics geeks because they just aren't as interested in it.
At this stage, I doubt whether even the Russian report probably would have had an impact.
The normalisation of lying
This is the most worrying of all. Trump got to power on a throne of lies. It has been shown that 88% of Conservative adverts during the campaign where either lies or misrpresntations of the truth. However, scrutiny of these sorts of things isn't up to the standard I would want from journalists, and there are no electoral rules around this like voting reform, it isn't in the interests of the winning party to change them unless it favours them. I can imagine a hung party and a coalition of the smaller parties may have pushed for both of these things but I doubt that will happen now for at least another five years.
How do we overcome all this?
I have no freaking clue and I'm too tired to even think about this, but I hope for the sake of future generations we find a way to do so.
