Yes it was an earthquake, so prepare for another one soon

So was the General Election the sixth earthquake? Oh yes. On top of all the previous quakes, we experienced another as the Conservatives lost their majority in the election that Theresa May never needed to call. Remember Brenda from Bristol on the day the election was called: “Another one? Why does she need to do it?” Why was Brenda not employed as a special adviser at Number 10?


And now a mortally wounded Prime Minister must face the Brexit negotiations, a terror threat which will keep returning, the ongoing aftermath of Trump-quake, a potentially mutinous party, an emboldened opposition and a prospective odd-couple arrangement with the Democratic Unionists. Another General Election cannot be far away – so sorry, Brenda from Bristol. And before it happens, the Conservatives will have to be rid of their electoral millstone, Mrs May herself. So the chances are that the tectonic plates will continue to shift at disorienting pace. Let us try to imagine the possibilities...

The Labour Party achieved its objective with astonishing precision. Jeremy Corbyn established himself as an authentic politician who resonated strongly with many who have lost patience with manufactured robotic politicians who are petrified of going off message. He played to his strength as a campaigner. The overstatement and lampooning of his weaknesses by some of the media actually worked in his favour. Labour harnessed the youth vote, persuaded under 30s to actually vote – and where they had a choice of where to vote, apps and social media helped them to cast their ballots to greatest effect. Look at the big increase in the Labour vote in university seats, often leading to Labour gains, some of them spectacular. Mr Corbyn is now full of confidence and on the front foot.

On the other hand, Labour did not do well enough to be embarrassed by victory. The last thing they wanted to do was suddenly to find themselves taking power while being totally unprepared to govern. Then they would have had to implement their manifesto, or more probably lamely explain why they were unable to do so, and they would have had to negotiate Brexit. Yes, this would have put the extremely able Sir Keir Starmer in charge of negotiations. But Labour would have drowned in the toxic Brexit swamp which now lies ominously across the path that the Conservatives are now staggering along. Labour made healthy gains, especially in London and the South, but the Conservatives took a few seats further north such as Mansfield, which since 1900 has never elected a Conservative. And who would have thought that Stoke-on-Trent could find itself with a Conservative MP for the first time since 1935? There are clearly plenty of traditional working-class Labour voters who don’t “get” Mr Corbyn.

It is still possible, though unlikely, that Labour will shortly form a minority government. If not, they might well succeed in winning another election which could happen before the two years of Brexit negotiations are up. In that case the negotiating team will switch political horses part way through. Also both major parties will be able to share the glory, or more likely blame, for the deal that is struck with the EU. And then would there in fact need to be another referendum or yet another election to test public support for the deal?

How good a Prime Minister would Jeremy Corbyn actually be? Does he have the leadership skills, talent, industry and stamina to do the job? He has managed to campaign very successfully, but can he lead a country? Looking at his Shadow Cabinet team, how good is his judgment of people? Whether Diane Abbott is ill or not, why was she Shadow Home Secretary until a few days ago? Indeed why was she in that post at all? Will his party come together and stay together? Does the country really want the more left-wing aspects of the Labour manifesto? Is it at all affordable? And given the toll that Brexit will take on ministerial, civil service and legislative time, how much of it could feasibly be implemented anyway? Labour are acting as if they won the election, but numerically they didn’t. If they find themselves in power in the next few years, it could well be as a minority government. How would Mr Corbyn handle the juggling act required when dealing with any supporting parties such as the SNP? There are a lot of questions for him to answer.

On the subject of the Conservatives, there is little to add to what has already been widely written. Hubris brought the election on, and nemesis followed it. Now that we know more about the shortcomings of her two closest advisers, no longer in posts they should never have occupied, Theresa May’s judgment is as much in question as that of her opposite number. In the three days since the election, she has only managed to stir up public anger by her extraordinarily insensitive pronouncements. Is she totally unaware of the message the electorate have sent her, or is she merely pretending that nothing much happened? There is a serious lack of logic in continuing to determine to act upon the will of the people as expressed in the 2016 referendum, while apparently ignoring (or at least being in denial about) the will of the people as expressed on 8 June. More serious than the lack of logic is the total absence of emotional intelligence. If you profess to lead people, you need to understand them. And she doesn’t. At all.

By taking unnecessary gambles, David Cameron and Theresa May have landed us in a mess for which the Conservative Party will be blamed for some time to come. In order to carry on the Queen’s government, they are looking to come to an accommodation with the Democratic Unionists, with Mrs May describing them as her “friends and allies”. She is likely to discover the unpleasant truth that your friends can hurt you far more than your enemies. The DUP are not exactly known for their flexibility, and they will surely make the most of every opportunity they can create. With all the May-hem on the mainland, the election in Northern Ireland has not been a major story. It should have been, because the more extreme sectarian parties, the DUP and Sinn Fein, eliminated their more moderate counterparts, the Ulster Unionists and the catholic SDLP, leaving only one independent unionist to disturb their otherwise total domination of the 18 Northern Irish seats (and she has the DUP breathing down her neck). Bearing in mind Mr Corbyn’s historic links to the IRA, and therefore by implication to their political proxies, Sinn Fein, there is now the prospect that the main Westminster parties will be taking sides across the sectarian divide – the last thing Northern Ireland needs at this time when two major issues need sorting out, namely the restoration of a power-sharing government in Stormont and the resolution of the Irish border question in negotiation with the EU. Whoever is in power in London needs to act as honest broker between the parties in the Province, not as cheerleader for one of them.

The election appears to have been a missed opportunity for the Liberal Democrats, although in their defence they still suffer unfairly from the stigma attached to them for their participation in the 2010-15 coalition. Their programme was robustly costed and contained some compelling ideas. The 1p on income tax to pay for the NHS made some sense, although it was perhaps too simplistic – the model could have been more complex and weighted towards taxing higher income earners. The other parties continue to play safe over the legalisation of cannabis, a measure proposed by the Lib Dems and an idea with sufficient merit to have been adopted fully by 8 American states and to a limited extent mainly for medical use by nearly all the others. On this issue, the Lib Dems will probably turn out to be only fractionally ahead of their time. Their problem in the campaign was that their leader in effect had to do almost all the presentation of their case. Tim Farron is likeable, folksy and amusing, but he does not come across as a political heavyweight. He even came within 777 votes of suffering the embarrassing loss of his own seat. However, while Nick Clegg was swept away by the pro-Labour student vote, the Lib Dems at least gained some heavy hitters returning after their 2015 disaster, including the redoubtable Vince Cable.

In Scotland, the SNP experienced dramatic reverses – 21 out of 56 seats including the loss of their leader at Westminster, Angus Robertson, plus the iconic Alex Salmond - which surely will kill off talk of a second independence referendum for a while to come. Moreover, half of the SNP’s remaining 35 seats are vulnerable to small swings against them, so things could easily get worse still for the SNP and of course better for Ruth Davidson’s remarkably resurgent Scottish Conservatives and for Scottish Labour, the reports of whose death have proved to be greatly exaggerated.

On the other hand, it is probably not premature to declare UKIP to be dead in the water, even if Nigel Farage returns as leader for approximately the fourth time (even he may have lost count by now).

So overall the electorate which voted a year ago to leave the EU has now managed to vote to sabotage the Brexit process, because the EU is bound to see any government(s) with whom they have to negotiate as significantly weakened, while the UK’s position could even change during the course of the two year period. It is very difficult even to begin to foresee how this will work out.

One very positive development was the re-engagement of younger people with politics. They have plenty to be unhappy about, so the Brexit vote largely by their elders was probably the final trigger which galvanised them into democratic action. In my last post I highlighted the possibility of intergenerational conflict arising out of numerous grievances the young have been remarkably silent about – until now. Action needs to be taken on their behalf. It is often not easy for politicians to identify and be able to follow what they see as the right course of action. Expediency usually rules. But at this point it is simply not right that the young should be burdened as they are with student debt and given too little hope of owning their own home and even of getting a reasonably well paid job, while pensions are triple locked and pensioners receive handouts regardless of whether they actually need them, all because the parties are petrified of losing the grey vote. We need to respect and care for the elderly, but a nation that starves its young people of hope is a nation doomed to decline. This is a moment for government to do the right things, and if they cost then they cost. It would be a good thing if some of this could even become a non-party issue, in particular beginning with an impartial inquiry into the provision and financing of care in later life.

Finally (for now), I observe that we have a Conservative Party whose obsessions and alliances underline its drift to the right. We have a Labour Party whose new leadership has hauled it sharply to the left. So one certainly can no longer complain that the two main parties are just the same. But on the other hand one might have grounds for thinking that both are equally, for different reasons, unattractive. The centre ground in British politics used to be uncomfortably crowded. Now it is largely empty, save for groups of limited size and influence on the moderate wings of the two big parties and save for the Liberal Democrats. There is therefore an opportunity for the Lib Dems to exploit without being in any way untrue to their core beliefs. Some countries are choosing leaders from well outside the political mainstream and/or outside their traditionally major parties. They could not be more different, but Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron fit in these categories. The opportunity is there for the Lib Dems to do a Macron and drive down the empty six-lane highway running through the centre of British politics. They need a new leader, not necessarily immediately but definitely soon and preferably at the moment of maximum impact, and that leader would do well to forge links with the new President of France, to learn the lessons of his success and indeed to learn from the ways in which the Labour Party has mobilised young voters. If the newly galvanised Lib Dems start to gain momentum, some MPs in the two main parties could jump ship. The new leader will need to offer a more moderate alternative to voters of all ages, including particularly the young, not all of whom by any means are naturally of the left. In any case their Corbynista enthusiasm may well wane when reality bites at some point down the track. While at present their hero is a 68-year-old, I suspect that they will soon find themselves identifying more with a much younger leader, so long as he or she has the right credentials.

The Liberal Democrats now have such a leader in waiting who has the potential to achieve all this and more, even yet another earthquake. Cometh the hour, cometh Jo Swinson.