It’s come to this then. A General Election.
You have to admire Boris Johnson, who by some fluke (or subterfuge) is now our Prime Minister; despite (or because of) his downright shamelessness.
His lies (to parliament, to the Queen, to the population at large), his misdirection’s, his sheer gall when dealing with the thorny Brexit problem and his two-facedness have now resulted in a General Election.
This will be first General Election to be held in December for almost a hundred years.
And, the Tories will win.
In reality, this General Election has been called because Johnson leads a minority government.
It has not been called to sort out our relationship with the EU, although that is the bluster Johnson has used. There are enough ‘single-issue’ Brexit supporters in the country to believe that this is the only thing that matters.
Johnson eventually managed to present parliament with a ‘deal’ that they really could not deny, given that their previous (many) denials were because of the Irish Backstop.
All he had to do was move the border from where it used to be (from Lough Foyle in the north of Ireland to Carlingford Lough in the northeast [1]) and into the middle of the Irish Sea.
I’m not sure what the Irish government think of that – or, in the long run what the inhabitants of Ulster think.
The Tories will, for the first time in two years, govern with a comfortable majority. By the time this term is finished, we will have had a Conservative government for the best part of fifteen years (although it was initially bolstered by the Liberal party, who jumped at the chance of being in power for a while). My friend Jim Scott used to say “scratch a Liberal, find a Tory”.
Economy
So, despite ten years of austerity caused by the crash/recession of the late noughties and despite the ensuing (many) redundancies and bankruptcies, there still seems to be a feeling amongst the general public that the Tories have been good for the economy over those ten years.
They have not!
Despite all the most painful government cutbacks, the national debt has almost doubled since 2010. The UK National Debt went over £1 trillion in 2011 and by budget time in March 2020 it is estimated to be £1.84 trillion [2]
The public has have been so misinformed by the popular press over the last four years, that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition Labour Party, has been demonised beyond redemption. Despite his party’s successes in the 2017 General Election, he is still thought by many to be a terrorist sympathiser, an extreme left-wing ‘communist’ and a downright baddy. And, because of that, many say they will not vote Labour. That is like turkeys denying that Christmas is coming.
One man is not his party. Which is something we should remember when ‘we’ think that Boris Johnson is a lovable old rogue.
The Liberal Party say that they will ‘Revoke Article 50’, which, if this were a normal General election, would make no sense on its own, but as many voters think that Brexit is the one single issue, they (the Liberals), may well pick up some votes. However, I wouldn’t trust a word the Liberals say in their as yet to be seen manifesto, because in 2010 they said they would not implement university fees and they said they would fight for proportional representation, amongst other things. Yet none of these promises were fulfilled once they had snuggled up with the Tories.
The NHS
The NHS has been under funded and under scrutiny for many years now. I know that the initial bids for private tender were first allowed back in the 1980’s – but this has continued to increase exponentially over the last ten years.
‘There are clearly different ways of calculating how much NHS money is spent on NHS services provided by private companies. However, the bottom line is that – however the figures are arrived at – healthcare in England is now much less directly provided by the NHS than most people think.’
Also
‘There are also concerns about whether or not private companies are avoiding paying tax on their profits. For example, Virgin Care pays no tax in the UK: it’s parent company is registered in the British Virgin Islands.’
http://www.patients4nhs.org.uk/private-companies-involvement-in-the-nhs/
Hospitals up and down the country are also under threat of closure, e.g.
- https://officialhandsoffhri.org/,
- https://www.liverpoolecho.co.uk/news/liverpool-news/five-nhs-walk-centres-across-15180223,
- http://999callfornhs.org.uk/network-999-north-west/4586688769,
- https://wirralleaks.wordpress.com/tag/defend-our-nhs/
and yet, we see stories of a future Tory government issuing more contracts to private companies, including drug companies based in the USA. The Conservative party really couldn’t care less about the NHS.
I know that this has been a fairly long rant, but I had to get it off my chest. I still have lots of thoughts about how the future will affect me personally, but I worry much more about the future for younger generations. If zero-hour contracts are allowed to flourish, how will young families ever afford to make their way in an increasingly ‘dog-eat-dog’ world? Since the Tories took over, the education system has become one that teaches young people to ‘pass the test’, rather than ‘how to think’. Perhaps that is because ‘the elite’ don’t want to have a well educated ‘under class’? Who knows. Perhaps I don’t and never will, but I do feel much better for having had this rant.
I know that many will have differing views to me and I respect that. Please respect mine.
Previous election rants.
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2016/07/19/feeling-disenfranchised/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2016/06/22/come-what-may/
https://saturdaywalks.wordpress.com/2016/06/11/staying-in/
Like I said:
Saturday Walks 