How we got to here

There is a certain irony – and perhaps sympathy to be extended – whenever the ‘house-of-cards’ edifice of someone’s life collapses, all the more so when this happens in an unforgiving front-of-stage spotlight of public gaze and media comment.

As I beheld the weekend’s newspaper and political programmes’ analysis of the General Election result’s entrails I felt slightly uncomfortable. Rather like I do when I’m travelling along a motorway and privately criticise ‘rubberneckers’ for slowing down out of curiosity to take a look at the aftermath of a multiple-car accident that has just taken place on the opposite carriageway when, involuntarily or not, I find myself doing exactly the same.

Consider the plight of Mrs May and her family (someone has to).

Less than three months ago she was seemingly mistress of all she surveyed.

As Prime Minister of the UK she was unassailable within the Tory Party and had a slim but manageable parliamentary majority.

Labour, meanwhile, was in complete disarray, now consigned to years of unelectability having accidentally but catastrophically saddled itself with ineffectual ‘Loony Left’ Jeremy Corbyn as its leader whilst fighting an ongoing but losing battle with the cancer of its insidious fifth columnist Momentum activist faction.

She had negotiated the tricky waters of the EU Referendum Brexit outcome and triggered Article 50 to begin the two-year period of negotiations to determine the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

She had secured a significant hike to her reputation as a global stateswoman by becoming one of the first Western leaders to visit the new US President Donald Trump in the White House.

Nobody in her position would have been taking anything for granted, of course, but maybe a combination of a fawning ‘inner circle, a largely-supportive mainstream media, a degree of beginning to believe her own publicity and finally a tablespoonful of hubris had left her feeling that she had at last ‘arrived’, got to grips with the controls of power and was about to secure her rightful and lasting legacy in the long, proud and glorious history of this great nation of ours.

And then she decided – or if some pundits are to be believed, was persuaded (by idiots probably well-known in political media circles but unnamed at the time) – to strike while the iron was hot, call a snap General Election, complete a rout of the already-ebbing parliamentary opposition and glide smoothly into a metaphorical second ‘Commonwealth/Protectorate’ with herself cast – in an echo of Cromwell’s 1649-1658 period of rule – as the first Lady Protector of England.

Ah well, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men …’ – and all that jazz.

Thanks to (1) ‘events, dear boy, events’; (2) a decidedly third-rate, accident-prone, Election strategy/campaign; (3) something that literally nobody had anticipated in advance – probably not even himself in his wildest fantasies – i.e. the overnight extraordinary ‘life journey’ of Jeremy Corbyn that transformed him against all odds into Super-Jezz, a political leader with rock star-like, anti-Establishment credentials; and, lastly, (4) the inherent character weaknesses of Mrs May herself … as we all now know, the Tory Government’s master plan turned into a complete disaster, with far-reaching consequences and implications that nobody (including those with far greater minds than mine) has yet got to the bottom of, let alone grips with.

In here identifying Mrs May’s personal deficiencies as the key issue I do not wish to detract from Jeremy Corbyn’s remarkable ascent in popularity since the General Election was called on 29th March.

As a general principle, every human being should be encouraged to strive to become whatever they wish or (through merit) can. Without doubt – in order to achieve an ambition – first you have to have one.

And yet – it’s so easy to reach confident assertions with the benefit of hindsight, isn’t it? – Mrs May is the sort of person who is not suited to public leadership. Arguably she (and those like her) should never be allowed to go into politics.

Granted, she is earnest, diligent and hard-working. But – via genetics, being a single child, nurture, whatever – it is her sad lot in life to have been fundamentally flawed for the very path to which she was attracted.

She does relationships, especially with people she doesn’t know well or at all, by numbers.

Ideally politicians and leaders need to be comfortable in their own skin, charismatic, outgoing and possessed of a pronounced ability to connect with others on a human level – call it ‘natural likeability’ if you will.

Whatever position on an issue they hold (or are required to hold) at any particular time, they have to be able to ‘sell’ it with sufficient conviction to impress, an attribute that has as much to do with personality and lightness of touch as it does with the skill to marshal your arguments and repeat them ad nauseam unless and until the unconvinced give up and surrender.

Success in politics is rarely to do with being correct on any argument or issue. It’s the reason it must be so frustrating to be a politician. You know you’re right and yet, when you put your case to the electorate, it’s effectively no more than a roll of the dice (or the toss of a coin) as to whether you will prevail.

That’s why, however loud their protests to the contrary, it is indisputably the case that currently the Tory Party is ‘bang to rights’ guilty of putting its own interests ahead of the country’s. The only ‘national’ dimension’ to their current angst over Mrs May and frantic navel-gazing, internal plotting, off-stage in-fighting and ‘DUP Pact’ negotiations is their conviction that it is in the national interest to keep Mr Corbyn out of Number 10.

But surely, in a democracy – which I thought we were the last time I looked – that’s for the electorate to decide, not the Tory Party?

Perhaps it is because there’s so much talk at the moment of the country being massively divided, but it occurred to me overnight that it would be to everyone’s general advantage (from a political allegiance point of view) if the UK could be duplicated, atom by atom, and rendered into two parallel universes.

(Bear with me here). In one, the UK would be organised, funded and run by the Tory Party and all those who consider themselves Tories. In the other, it would be organised, funded and run by the Labour Party and all those who consider themselves natural Labour supporters.

And never the twain would meet.

You never know, perhaps in one the inhabitants would end up being healthier, wealthier and wiser – and perhaps in the other they’d just be happier.

I’d never be so presumptuous as to hazard a guess as to which of them might be which.