Comments on the aftermath of the UK General Election 2017.
To paraphrase Jonathan Pie, Corbyn won by losing even as May
lost by winning.
This was not just a victory for the working class, the
common people, of the UK, this was a victory for all of us around the world
hoping for a better tomorrow.
I’m ecstatic that Labour south of the Tweed beat back the
Tory Trump-wannabes so far, and congratulate UK Labour on a job well done. Scottish Labour, not so much. You need to get rid of your Blairite
riff-raff.
Sometime in the late evening on this side of the pond, early
morning over there, one of the American comedians whose page I monitor on
Facebook posted news of what was going down with this note: “America. Take note.
Neoliberals, “centrist” third-way Democrats (i.e. conservative in every
other developed country in the world), we’re coming for you. #jeremycorbyn”. Jeremy Corbyn’s victory proved utterly wrong
and without merit not only Tony Blair and his ilk in the UK Labour Party, but
Blair’s mentor Bill Clinton and his ilk in the American Democratic Party, those
who actively cheated and robbed us of the chance to see a candidate for social
justice stand against the overgrown Oompa Loompa and there by delivered
America, and the world, into Baby Fist’s tiny little hands. Lack of hope has never won an election, and
lack of hope is all New Labour and New Democrats have to offer.
In the words of Jonathan Pie again, a little bit
abbreviated,“Blairite, centrist, faux-left, faux socialist, faux-fucking
give-a-fuck Tory-tribute actors....New Labour is dead, you fuckers, and that’s
the best result of any election I’ve ever seen”. That’s right, you sleezy champagne socialist,
limousine liberal, gauche caviar, pragmatic progressive motherfuckers, your day
is done, unless you trade in your running shoes for a pair of work boots and
get down in the trenches with us peasants, proles, and paupers instead of
sipping champagne and eating caviar with the lords of the Square Mile, Wall
Street, etc., and their 1% bosses.
It might take you a while to get the message, so we started
with the U.S. presidential election when your New Democrats pushed on us the
most sterotypical establishment representative of all that we hate on us and we
responded by staying home. What’s that
you say? Look at Trump, look what
happened because of you? No, you wankers,
you diddlers, you friggers, you monkey spankers, that’s what happens when you
cheat someone actually talking about giving us what we want, what we need, out
of being our candidate.
But you still didn’t get the message.
Then came the French presidential elections. We the people there sent Hollande home, and
while they still ended up with a neoliberal, he’s not one of your ilk and seems
to play a more fair game, but we will have to see.
And you still didn’t get the message.
Now we the people in UK have given to Theresa May and her Terrible
Tories the biggest finger in UK politics since Labour gave to Churchill and his
Tories in 1945. Maybe now you don’t need
to ask a weatherman which way the wind is blowing to know the storm is coming.
So, again, congratulations, and thanks, to everyone out there
who campaigned, wrote, spoke, blogged, podcasted, stood, crossed your fingers,
helped out in any way.
Now, to Scotland.
Yes, SNP seemingly got knocked back on its heels, but down was the only
direction it had to go. Let’s put this
into perspective. When SNP went into the
general election in 2014, it had 6 seats in Scotland’s delegation to
Westminster. Old pre-Corbyn New Labour
had 41 seats, the Tories had 1 seat, and the LibDems 11. After the election, SNP had 56 seats and each
of the other three had but 1. That was
the state of Scotland’s delegation before the election. Some have accused SNP of being too
complacent, and there is some merit to that as I must admit is true in my case,
one of the pitfalls of starting a game with odds stacked that much in one’s
favor.
So, yes, SNP lost 21 seats in Westminster, but the Scottish delegation
now probably better represents the Scottish people. SNP’s portion of that is still more than
two-and-a-half times that of any other party, and, of course, it still has an
overwhelmingly majority in the Scottish Parliament, especially alongside fellow
nationalist SGP. And it’s still more
than 29 seats ahead of what its portion of the delegation to Westminster was in
2014. In any case, despite Ruth’s
screams of glee, that Parliament has already voted to pursue another indyref.
I have to say to Ruth Davidson, Ruth, you did a hell of a
job, I’m glad you were not in charge down south. Yes, I oppose nearly everything you support,
but shit, you took the Scottish Tories from having one seat, which I believe is
all your party has ever had, and took that to thirteen seats, which is an accomplishment
in anyone’s book.
To Nicola Sturgeon; the losses were not about Brexit or the
push for independence. It was about
mixed messages and mixed metaphors.
Independence, clearly on everyone’s mind in the 2015 general election
and the 2016 election for the Scottish parliament, is not the same issue as
Brexit, and that’s what a lot of your party’s campaign was about this election.
Many of those who adamantly supported Remain did so
primarily for the same reason others supported Brexit; because of who the guys
on the other side were. A lot of them
were like me, and once all the votes were cast, it was as if we were waking up
from a weekend of drinking whisky and smoking weed going I did what? Because there are, as I have stated in this
forum on more than one occasion, many, many good reasons for despising the EU,
if nothing else than because it espouses the same values and principles, if you
want to call them that, as New Labour, Tories, New Democrats, French and
Spanish Socialists, German Social Democrats, basically all those people to whom
the people of the UK just gave the finger.
And I repeat, people really don’t like mixed metaphors, like
flying too close to the sun and ending up Shit Creek without a paddle on a
leaky raft.
