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As I started tonight’s show at the Leicester Square Theatre I gloomily predicted that things shouldn’t be too bad for now as we still had hope, but it was tomorrow’s audience that would need some proper cheering up. The crowd laughed in agreement. It seemed certain that the Tories were going to win this, even if they had seemed determined to fuck up their shot at the open goal, by unnecessarily putting a fox hunt and a load of bullshit about inheritance tax in front of it.
But it seemed the pollsters and underestimated the young voters, Jeremy Corbyn and how pissed off the electorate were at being taken for granted. I got home in time to see the exit poll and my heart sank as I saw the graphic saying the Tories were winning it. Of course they were. I have got used to elections punching me in the heart. But wait, no, it was saying the Tories were the biggest party, but weren’t going to get a majority. Surely it couldn’t be true. We’ve been here before too and like many I was convinced that the minute I went to bed and couldn’t keep my eye on stuff , that it would spin out of control and I’d wake up to an entirely different result.
It did seem like a dream. I have not been Corbyn’s biggest fan, but mainly because I didn’t think he had any chance of getting elected. I always said I’d be delighted to be proven wrong. And who wouldn’t want to see the complacent Tories go into this election with the intention of wiping the floor with Labour, but end up reducing their own number of seats? It would be too funny.
Ironically Corbyn’s perceived weakness has been his strength - it is a classic Herring Manoeuvre. Make your opponents assume you’re dead in the water and then once they call an election, BANG, keep your fingers crossed that they will somehow implode and then bring out your A game. And in the last couple of weeks Corbyn has been impressive and May has been so terrible (when she’s surfaced from the foxhole, where I assume she has been stuffing her face with fox) that it maybe shouldn’t have been a surprise that something like this was happening. Ironically without the division in the Labour party there would have been no election (at this crucial time), so whilst some Corbyn supporters were asking how good things might have been if everyone had unquestioningly got behind their leader from the start (not something that I feel comfortable with - I wouldn’t want to support any political party that didn’t allow you to dissent or say what you actually think) then there would be no election now. We’d all played our part!
As tired as I was, I settled down with some whisky and then cracked out some pickled onions to watch as events unfolded. It’s been increasingly clear that something needs to change in UK politics and that people do not trust their leaders,though the protest votes of recent years have possibly been self-defeating. The young, it seemed, had finally realised that once galvanised they are a political force that should not be ignored. But there are so many issues flying around and everything is so unpredictable that it seems crazy anyone in charge would have taken this risk. So who knew where the UKIP voters would turn or what would happen in Scotland. By the time I was going to bed it seemed that Scottish Tories were going to save May from defeat. I mean, who could have predicted that?
It was exciting and I was thrilled to be wrong about nearly everything. But anyone who thinks that this election proved them right about everything is a liar. And who knows where it will lead? Or indeed if we will wake up tomorrow with a Tory Majority of 500.
