ROLE MODELS

With the great and the good strutting their stuff, with partisan passions aflame and with the venal media reporting and exaggerating every little incident, you would have thought an election would stimulate the oratorical talents of every aspiring soap-box Gladstone and attract inspiring world-views from every village tin-pot Napoleon. Yet certainly my pulses are resolutely un-quickened and my heart beats at its usual torpid pace. The UK elections have yet to catch light; ordinary people have had a bucketful of politics, the faces are too familiar and the arguments cannot bear endless repetition. The electorate wants the poll to happen as soon as possible, for the urgent key decisions to be made and then to be left in peace for at least 5 years.

The central role in the election is held by the party leaders – they must give heart to their foot-soldiers and confound their enemies in front of admiring audiences. Such politicians are thin on the ground. Tory Boris is instantly recognizable and is generally quite liked, but I await a rousing speech from him – he has been ultra-cautious, if not quite as boring as the unlamented Theresa. Harrumphing about the merits of Brexit is fine for the faithful but he has to move minds hitherto closed or indifferent. We have only seen plonk ordinaire Boris so far – we crave for vintage bubbling Boris to pop our corks! A decisive win is within his grasp – go get it Boris!

Boris Johnson on the cusp of victory

At least he is a world better than Jeremy Corbyn, who embarrasses even his own Labour members. Posterity may well wonder what possessed Labour to vote him in as Leader in the first place and then to keep him when his inadequacies were laid bare. Never more than a street-corner agitator, he holds beliefs of such extreme idiocy that even Tony Benn would spin in his grave. Champion of everything anti-British, this rabid admirer of Ulbricht’s old East Germany is anti-American, anti-NATO, anti-EU (but keep that quiet!) anti-business, anti-Semitic and pro-CND, pro-Arab terrorist, pro-IRA, pro-nationalisation, pro-absurdly high government spending. He and his cronies, John McDonnell, Seumas Milne and Diane Abbott dream about the Marxist/Stalinist policy of destroying the gainfully employed majority by confiscating their wealth and distributing it to the poorest in our society. Sane Labour would never endorse such policies, but do not even wait to see: Corbyn is an Orwellian nightmare, unfit for high office and is beyond the pale of democratic politics.

Red Ideologue, Jeremy Corbyn

The Liberal Democrats made Jo Swinson their Leader in 2019. She is a Scot and leads a party of 21 members, swollen from an original 12 by oddball defections from both major parties. Jo was not well-known before becoming leader but she has been in Parliament since 2005. She talks endlessly about many transient LibDem causes not least the imbalance between men and women in top jobs in all spheres. She is articulate and enthusiastic but it is all to no avail. Her party’s USP is that it is the only main party backing Remain, viewed as a dismal, negative and antiquated prospect by most of the electorate. She will have to fight hard to retain any of her seats and I predict a LibDem disaster. Jo, I know it is ungallant to say this, but you must also do something to sort out those un-telegenic front teeth. No doubt in some constituencies she will poll quite well, but the voting system marginalizes third parties and the LibDems will be irrelevant in 2019.

Jo Swinson, LibDem cheerleader

Finally, we have the harridan from the SNP, Nicola Sturgeon. She has been First Minister of Scotland since 2014, succeeding Alex Salmond after the SNP-backed referendum on independence failed. She has administered Scotland reasonably sensibly although her country’s fiscal deficit continues to grow, its industries are sluggish and is kept solvent by generous Westminster subsidies. Brexit has given the SNP an opportunity to reopen the independence debate, a cause well-supported by about 25% of Scots these days but one which obsesses Sturgeon, who can talk of little else. The 2017 election showed a decline in SNP support and a Conservative revival. Despite the SNP’s trumpetings, I doubt if the SNP will make a clean sweep and I believe the Conservatives may hold on to its seats. There may be other surprises from Labour too as Scotland was its historic stronghold. The SNP fantasies about Scotland staying in Europe underline its feeble grip on reality. To voters outside Scotland, Sturgeon is a pain in the neck, spouting Anglophobia and personal hostility to Boris. Her glib chip-on-the-shoulder nationalism is deeply unattractive to many Scots too.

Nicola Sturgeon, hater of the Union

 So, our 4 political leaders are a rum lot and we cannot find a Cromwell, a Pitt a Churchill or a Thatcher between them. As a supporter of Brexit, I naturally gravitate towards Boris. I am now in Greece enjoying the autumnal pleasures of Athens and Salonika and only return on 10 December just on the eve of polling. Happily, I have already cast my postal vote in the Conservative cause and humbly suggest that my readers do the same.

SMD

28.11.19

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2019