Theresa May must go, and now.
It’s time for the Conservative party to grow up. For all our sakes, not just theirs.
As our beleaguered, and now farcically titled ‘Prime Minister’ herself has been boring us to death telling us for the last three weeks this country needs strong and stable leadership. She, of all people, is in no position to offer that to us. She commands no respect, even from within her party. She has no authority with anyone. She is not strong. Partnering up with a bunch of bible bashing homophobic climate denying Europhobes does not create any political stability. She has taken away the strong and stable government she promised, and brought us the ‘coalition of chaos’ she warned us of. For the sake of the country, and by way of an apology to us all, she has to go.
And the Conservative Party, who have wreaked unspeakable damage on this country through their selfish politicking owe it to us all to see she is replaced with an intelligent, credible, sensible politician. They do exist, and they do not include David Davis or Boris Johnson. Dig out one of your grandees, a One Nation, Centrist Conservative, who can bring the stability and certainty May says we need (entirely because of her and her party’s unforgivable behaviour).
The Conservatives, in a spectacularly short time, have left the country more divided than I have known it in my lifetime, it is more isolated, the economy is on a cliff edge, and we are rapidly becoming irrelevant on the international stage. They have lied to us, taken us to polls twice purely to resolve their own internal problems, and have called each of those polls wrongly, showing terrible error of judgement. To Theresa May I say damn you! How dare you tear my country apart like this. Before you and your party came along this was a strong and stable country, respected abroad, comfortable with itself at home. I was proud to say I’m British and you’ve taken that away from me. How dare you!
The Economist says that few have realised how badly the economy looks. Higher inflation, in part due to a considerably lower pound, will lead to real wages falling. “Tax revenues and growth will suffer as inward investment falls and net migration of skilled Europeans tails off.” It goes on to predict far greater austerity in the near future during the coming crunch. This is because of the political farce the Conservatives have played out at our expense.
And now, instead of even a hint of contrition, let alone the very welcome suggestion of a resignation, Theresa May has again cozied up with the very worst of people in order to maintain her position of power. In partnering with the Democratic Unionist Party, Theresa May is bringing into government ten people who will be able to threaten May to walk away from any law she tries to pass through Parliament. Without them voting for her legislation, she cannot govern. That is how much influence they will have on Theresa May, and by extension, that is how much influence they will have across the UK.
At a geographic level, their primary interest is Northern Ireland, so there can be no claiming that either May or the DUP are ‘acting in the interest of the country.’ The Country roundly voted against Theresa May, and the DUP have no constituency beyond Northern Ireland — they will not win votes if a policy benefits Manchester, for example.
As we in England, perhaps to our shame, don’t know much about the DUP, I’ve fallen back on this BBC piece about them. It goes on to say that Ian Paisley Jnr, the son of the party’s founder, and one of the 10 MPs, back in 2007 “told Hot Press magazine he was “pretty repulsed” by gay people and lesbianism. Mr Paisley later went on to defend his comments on BBC Newsnight saying he was “repulsed by many things.”
Sammy Wilson is a climate change denier, and was quoted as saying, “I don’t care about CO2 emissions to be quite truthful because I don’t think it’s all that important,” David Simpson, said in Parliament, “In the garden of Eden it was Adam and Eve, it wasn’t Adam and Steve.” And has argued to have Creationism taught as part of the Science curriculum in schools in Northern Ireland. The DUP do not reflect the UK today in any way and do not suddenly belong in Government because of May’s cock-up.
To be clear, as the BBC pointed out, “When the Commons voted on the Marriage (Same Sex Couples) Bill in 2013, DUP MPs Gregory Campbell, David Simpson, Jim Shannon, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, Ian Paisley Jnr, Sammy Wilson and Nigel Dodds all voted against it.” Remember that the bill was a piece of mainstream Conservative legislation, accepted across Parliament, not some wayward liberal campaign.
The UK has just voted in 45 openly gay MPs to Parliament, from all parties. They were put there by the people. By contrast, May has just brought 10 homophobes into Government. It is a massive insult to the electorate. Indeed, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who led a principled campaign, and actually did come out a winner, is gay and entering a same sex marriage soon. Even she, a successful Conservative Leader, had to demand assurances from May concerning the DUP’s attitude to same sex marriage.
And yet, Theresa May had the audacity to stand up in front of 10 Downing Street and say she felt it was in the interest of the country for her to form a government and remain Prime Minister, in order to bring ‘certainty’. We only need certainty because she took certainty away from us. We only need a strong and stable leader because she has not been one. How dare she!
The country wouldn’t be craving stability if Cameron hadn’t called a referendum on Europe, if Johnson hadn’t switched sides to support Brexit with lies about NHS funding, and if May hadn’t just called a snap election to shore up her personal ambition to be a new Thatcher and get a huge majority so she can be Prime Minister for a decade. There is absolutely nothing about the ‘best interest of the country’ in anything they or the Conservatives have done. They have turned the UK into a giant chess board on which they are playing out a brutal game, where Check Mate is becoming Prime Minister. All the rest of us are just dispensable pawns.
They have shown time and again they will do and say anything for power. It is a unique characteristics of the Conservative party. Other parties have principles, indeed, the Liberal Democrats and Labour have both lost numerous elections because they stuck to those principles. A criticism from within their parties of both Blair and Clegg is that they compromised on some of their party’s principles in order to be in government, yet compare that to both Johnson and May jumping from Remain to Leave in the blink of an eye.
Do not forget too quickly how Theresa May cuddled up to Trump, just as the rest of the world was recoiling from him. She visited him, offered him a State Visit to the UK, and when he withdrew from the Paris accord, she gave him a gentle chiding when the rest the world’s Leaders rebuked and openly criticised him. May will do anything to have and hold power. It is a personal obsession, and one of her Party.
She would say she is making these compromises for the sake of the country. We need a strong trading relationship with America because of Brexit, we need the DUP to create a Parliament in which one party has a working majority in a hung Parliament.
We didn’t have to have Brexit, and we didn’t have to have a hung Parliament. May and the Tories should not try to sell their increasingly Devilish pacts as reluctantly made for our sakes, they are all just so she or one of her friends can be Prime Minister. She is happy to damage her own party, and her country, and then stand up the next day and blindly tell us she is bringing the most extremist party in Westminster into power to create stability. How dare she!
And meanwhile, Corbyn is basking in the glory of having done not nearly as badly as even he had expected- he does deserve great credit for bringing out more young voters. But he also did not win this election, he just didn’t lose it as badly. His electability should not be measured in shades of failure. He proposed a manifesto that independent economists criticised as making no sense financially and being unaffordable. He is putting forward policies that brought this country to its knees in the 1970s, and his approach to taxation would heavily penalise Londoners in particular, who are still the driving force of the country’s economy. Just to be clear, it is not funny for a Londoner to hear that his party considers someone earning over £80,000 as rich, and in the firing line for punitive high taxation.
If Labour had been running a sensible, Centrist (and therefore more inclusive) campaign, with policies designed not just to take care of the vulnerable in society, but also to support the economy and recognise those who are paying for that social care, he would have won this election with a landslide. People should be focussing on that, rather than how well he did. Just as he failed to put up effective opposition during the Brexit referendum, and failed to hold May to account in Parliament, he has failed to remove one of the worst governments and political parties this country has experienced in a long time during an election that played entirely in his favour. He has run a populist campaign and done very well at it, but being popular is different to being fit to rule. That large swathes of his own party still refuse to vote for him is evidence of that.
We have, as a country, been let down by our political leaders. To call them leaders is generous. There is no statesmanship, little rational or informed thinking, a painful lack of reality and honesty. Things are so complicated now that it’s hard to see through all the noise to the plain facts. These are that Theresa May has no place running the country, and Corbyn has not put up a credible government in waiting.
We now have to watch Theresa May try to cling onto power with the support of a bunch of people who’s manifesto I saw described as ‘The Bible.’ We are encouraged to let her carry on just to avoid another Tory leadership contest, because we reluctantly agree that we need a strong leader to start the impending Brexit negotiations, which she fought Parliament and the Judiciary to trigger just before calling an election! She is not just an idiot, she’s being reckless with our children’s futures, with our country, with our home. How dare she!
Just as the we are waiting for the reasonable Republicans to take some responsibility and get rid of Trump, it is time for the decent Conservatives, who I know are furious, to get a grip of their party, and replace May with someone responsible and respected. The Tories have the mechanisms to do this quickly and smoothly. They could have someone in place by early next week, someone with enough standing not to become beholden to the DUP, someone with enough credibility not to make a hash of the Brexit negotiations. And no, that is not Boris Johnson. Enough is enough. It’s time for the Conservative party to grow up. For all our sakes, not just theirs.
