Post by Harkovast on Jun 10, 2017 13:09:56 GMT
I've had a go at Hillary Clinton for failing, and I've had a go at David Cameron for failing....but what if something could happen that combined both their mistakes into one astounding cluster fuck?
Theresa May took charge of the ruling Conservative Party in the UK, after David Cameron called a needless vote on the EU that backfired and destroyed his career.
Now something that foreigners might not know is that in the UK elections don't happen on a set date. They are carried out around every five years but can be called sooner by the party in power.
Obviously normally if you are already in power you wouldn't want another election, since you would risk losing what you've already got.
May....May had different idea.
She looked at the poles and saw Labour, the main opposition party, where in chaos. Their leader, ultra lefty David Corbyn was loved by the party base but hated by the party establishment. They saw him as embodying a socialist agenda that had failed the party in the past, and wanted to stick to the centrist/right wing version of Labour Tony Blair had created.
With Labour seemingly destroying itself, May saw an opportunity.
She had a reasonable 17 seat majority in Parliament, enough to basically get things done most of the time.
But what if she could expand that lead? Poles suggested that she could gain 100 seats, thus making her's the biggest majority in living memory! I mean...she would be a fool NOT to call an election...right?
So under the explanation that the country needed leadership with a strong mandate to take the country through Brexit negociations, she called an election.
Corbyn an old school lefty socialist. He never saw a public service he didn't want state run, or a high earner he didn't want to slap a tax on.
Naturally the media despised him from the get go.
A lot of people say the media has a left wing biased, and it does, but ONLY on social issues.
Wealthy media figures love to feel noble helping immigrants, sticking up for gays, demanding equality...but when it comes to fiscal matters, the idea of dipping into their own over stuffed pockets is less appealing! When it comes to fiscal matters, the media tends to go hard right.
Corbyn was not offering the usual "left wing" that they were used to, with a few platitudes about equality but keeping the system that funnels money to the very wealthy untouched. He was going full on socialist, tax the rich, left winger.
Now you can agree or disagree with his views, but the reasons for the medias hostility to what he was bringing were pretty obvious.
The media thus proceeded to bash Corbyn furiously! You could barely find a story about him that wasn't mocking his incompetence and predicting his exit from politics was near at hand.
In such an environment, its natural for arrogance to set in, as what should be a battle starts to be seen as a forgone conclusion. There is a terrible danger in elections of escalating expectations, as the battle seems so certain that anything less than over whelming victory becomes unthinkable.
May herself Tweeted that if she lost just six seats then Corbyn would be Prime Minister.
Obviously she was expecting to gain between 30 and 100 seats, so this was a ludicrous nightmare scenario that couldn't possibly happen...right?
We live in the age of Austerity in Britain.
This is the Tory policy where services are cut and spending reduced in order to avoid "living beyond our means".
Unfortunately in practice this has tended to result in poor people suffering the burdens of the economy while the very rich (who dont rely on benefits or public services) continue to get richer.
As an outsider observer, it probably isn't too hard to see how such an environment might lend itself to people finding a socialist platform more appealing. When the rich keep getting richer and your wages stagnate, the idea of upping their taxes and passing the money down those who are struggling starts to sound pretty appealing.
This came to a head with the Labour manifesto.
The media had been focusing on a hilarious gaff by a labour politician who flub all her numbers during a live debate, when the labour manifesto was leaked early. This caused a lot of people to pay attention to what was in it.
And people liked it.
Ideas like nationalising the horribly miss run trains, more police, taxing the rich etc sounded pretty good to the majority of people.
Spin and style will only get you so far, if you lack substance to back it up, and this was a case where the substance of what Corbyn actually wanted to do drowned out all the trivial, gossipy crap being thrown at him by the media.
When the Tory Manifesto dropped...the reaction was slightly different.
Ideas like bringing back fox hunting left people baffled (a sport where rich people use dogs to tear apart a wild animal didn't go down well with most voters...who could have guessed?)
One policy that got particular attention was that there would be means testing older people for their care. Unfortunately this means testing was set to involve all of a persons assets, meaning that most people would not qualify due to the value of their homes. This would mean old people would be selling their homes to pay for their care. The label "dementia tax" stuck pretty quickly, and May attempting to reverse or clarify her intentions only made things worse.
May had run on a platform that she was strong and stable, a phrase she repeated over and over to the point that it verged into parody. The weird insistence that she was for some reason the only one that could guide us through Brexit didn't seem to be really based on anything (she had been more strongly against Brexit than Corbyn during that campaign.) The entirely argument only rested on her being, in her own words "strong and stable". It sort of made sense early on, with Corbyn's leadership seeming so shaky and weak, she was there to offer the confident alternative.
Unfortunately, the endless repetition of "strong and stable" (seriously, she sometimes said the phrase more than once in the same speech!) meant that as soon as she wobbled on her manifesto, she was open to ridicule.
"Weak and wobbly" started to get bounced around more and more.
May is not a charismatic person at the best of times, speaking in dull tones full of stock phrases and repetition (Did she mention how strong and stable she is?) The more people saw of her, the less they liked her.
The same was happening with her manifesto, a document obviously written on the assumption that a Tory win was inevitable so they could pretty much do whatever they wanted. The more people looked at it, the less they liked it.
Meanwhile Corbyn was having the opposite effect. The more the public saw of him and his policies the more they liked it.
In a visit to Plymouth she gave the following interview to a news paper called the Herald-
The Herald: “Two visits in six weeks to one of the country’s most marginal constituencies – is she getting worried?”
May: “I’m very clear that this is a crucial election for this country.”
TH: “Plymouth is feeling the effects of military cuts. Will she guarantee to protect the city from further pain?”
M: “I’m very clear that Plymouth has a proud record of connection with the armed forces.”
TH: “How will your Brexit plan make Plymouth better off?”
M: “I think there is a better future ahead for Plymouth and for the whole of the UK.”
TH: “Will you promise to sort out our transport links?”
M: “I’m very clear that connectivity is hugely important for Plymouth and the south-west generally.”
It became obvious to everyone that she had just gone through the whole interview without actually saying ANYTHING. You could had subbed her out with an auto chat program that just rephrases questions back as pseudo answers and it wouldn't come out much worse.
But May and the Conservatives were still confident.
I mean the media were largely still on her side, though some bad stories were starting to slip through, and a few poles saying her lead was slipping was nothing to worry about, right?
She proceeded to refuse to take part in a face to face debate with Corbyn. She would take questions from the audience and interviewer, but only separately to him.
This came to ahead when there was a live TV debate of party leaders.
Corbyn showed up....May did not.
She sent another Tory MP in her place.
I don't know what she thought would happen on that stage if she showed up, but unless she expected to shit herself, fall over and die, there was no way to get a worse result than a no show.
You could read any bad trait you wanted into it.
The Liberal Democrat Leader scoffed that May couldn't even be bothered to show up so why should the voters be bothered? He joked they should be watching the greatest British Bake Off on another channel.
May was running as strong and stable, the tough negotiator who could get a good Brexit deal...but now she was too scared to even show up to face Corbyn? And how good a negotiator could she be if she couldn't even contest a debate?
When the election finally happened, a few last minute poles said May was still on course to win the huge majority she was looking for, so everyone was fairly sure of the expected result.
And then everything went nuts.
Early exit poles immediately suggested Corbyn had done far better than expected.
As results came through, it became clear that ideas of a big majority...or indeed any majority, were a fantasy.
In UK politics, to form the government you need a majority of at least half the seats up for grabs in parliament.
May managed to get the most seats of any party, but fell short of a majority.
Keep in mind, this was in a an election she DID NOT need to hold.
She had taken a Tory majority that should have lasted another 3 years, gambled it needlessly and pissed it away.
In order to gain the extra seats to form a government, May was forced to make a deal with the DUP.
Who are the DUP you ask?
Yeah a lot of people outside of Northern Ireland were asking that same question the day after the election.
The democratic ulster unionist party are a protestant, pro union party in Northern Ireland.
They are ultra religious, had ties to Loyalist terror groups during the troubles, are homophobic, sectarian, anti catholic and don't believe in evolution.
They also now had the ability to make demands of the UK government in exchange for allowing it to function.
Yeah....
So if you think Labour didn't like May before the election...just imagine how conservatives felt about her now?
This idiot woman had run a pathetic campaign, with a shit manifesto in an election SHE DIDN'T NEED TO HOLD!
And now they were being expected to get into bed with the fucking DUP in order to hold onto the government?
May's "victory" speech sounded shell shocked, her voice trembling and just repeating the same phrases about stability she had before but with mentions of "our friends" in the DUP thrown in.
She hurried away without talking to reporters, for obvious reasons.
The calls for her resignation came from all sides (even the leader of the DUP said she couldn't see how May could continue.)
May had promised stability but had brought chaos. She had made the government weak and confused prior to some of the most important negotiations in history. What was meant to be a lap of honour had turned into a feeble limp over the finish line.
Every argument for why she needed to hold the election was now an argument for why she was an utter failure.
Hilariously, Corbyn had been accused of being sympathetic to Sinn Fein, the anti-union party in Northern Ireland during the campaign, claiming this showed he was sympathetic to terrorists.
Well at least he never formed a government with them, huh May?
What comes next?
I have no idea!
May has taken control of the wheel and driven the bus into a supermarket.
Theresa May took charge of the ruling Conservative Party in the UK, after David Cameron called a needless vote on the EU that backfired and destroyed his career.
Now something that foreigners might not know is that in the UK elections don't happen on a set date. They are carried out around every five years but can be called sooner by the party in power.
Obviously normally if you are already in power you wouldn't want another election, since you would risk losing what you've already got.
May....May had different idea.
She looked at the poles and saw Labour, the main opposition party, where in chaos. Their leader, ultra lefty David Corbyn was loved by the party base but hated by the party establishment. They saw him as embodying a socialist agenda that had failed the party in the past, and wanted to stick to the centrist/right wing version of Labour Tony Blair had created.
With Labour seemingly destroying itself, May saw an opportunity.
She had a reasonable 17 seat majority in Parliament, enough to basically get things done most of the time.
But what if she could expand that lead? Poles suggested that she could gain 100 seats, thus making her's the biggest majority in living memory! I mean...she would be a fool NOT to call an election...right?
So under the explanation that the country needed leadership with a strong mandate to take the country through Brexit negociations, she called an election.
Corbyn an old school lefty socialist. He never saw a public service he didn't want state run, or a high earner he didn't want to slap a tax on.
Naturally the media despised him from the get go.
A lot of people say the media has a left wing biased, and it does, but ONLY on social issues.
Wealthy media figures love to feel noble helping immigrants, sticking up for gays, demanding equality...but when it comes to fiscal matters, the idea of dipping into their own over stuffed pockets is less appealing! When it comes to fiscal matters, the media tends to go hard right.
Corbyn was not offering the usual "left wing" that they were used to, with a few platitudes about equality but keeping the system that funnels money to the very wealthy untouched. He was going full on socialist, tax the rich, left winger.
Now you can agree or disagree with his views, but the reasons for the medias hostility to what he was bringing were pretty obvious.
The media thus proceeded to bash Corbyn furiously! You could barely find a story about him that wasn't mocking his incompetence and predicting his exit from politics was near at hand.
In such an environment, its natural for arrogance to set in, as what should be a battle starts to be seen as a forgone conclusion. There is a terrible danger in elections of escalating expectations, as the battle seems so certain that anything less than over whelming victory becomes unthinkable.
May herself Tweeted that if she lost just six seats then Corbyn would be Prime Minister.
Obviously she was expecting to gain between 30 and 100 seats, so this was a ludicrous nightmare scenario that couldn't possibly happen...right?
We live in the age of Austerity in Britain.
This is the Tory policy where services are cut and spending reduced in order to avoid "living beyond our means".
Unfortunately in practice this has tended to result in poor people suffering the burdens of the economy while the very rich (who dont rely on benefits or public services) continue to get richer.
As an outsider observer, it probably isn't too hard to see how such an environment might lend itself to people finding a socialist platform more appealing. When the rich keep getting richer and your wages stagnate, the idea of upping their taxes and passing the money down those who are struggling starts to sound pretty appealing.
This came to a head with the Labour manifesto.
The media had been focusing on a hilarious gaff by a labour politician who flub all her numbers during a live debate, when the labour manifesto was leaked early. This caused a lot of people to pay attention to what was in it.
And people liked it.
Ideas like nationalising the horribly miss run trains, more police, taxing the rich etc sounded pretty good to the majority of people.
Spin and style will only get you so far, if you lack substance to back it up, and this was a case where the substance of what Corbyn actually wanted to do drowned out all the trivial, gossipy crap being thrown at him by the media.
When the Tory Manifesto dropped...the reaction was slightly different.
Ideas like bringing back fox hunting left people baffled (a sport where rich people use dogs to tear apart a wild animal didn't go down well with most voters...who could have guessed?)
One policy that got particular attention was that there would be means testing older people for their care. Unfortunately this means testing was set to involve all of a persons assets, meaning that most people would not qualify due to the value of their homes. This would mean old people would be selling their homes to pay for their care. The label "dementia tax" stuck pretty quickly, and May attempting to reverse or clarify her intentions only made things worse.
May had run on a platform that she was strong and stable, a phrase she repeated over and over to the point that it verged into parody. The weird insistence that she was for some reason the only one that could guide us through Brexit didn't seem to be really based on anything (she had been more strongly against Brexit than Corbyn during that campaign.) The entirely argument only rested on her being, in her own words "strong and stable". It sort of made sense early on, with Corbyn's leadership seeming so shaky and weak, she was there to offer the confident alternative.
Unfortunately, the endless repetition of "strong and stable" (seriously, she sometimes said the phrase more than once in the same speech!) meant that as soon as she wobbled on her manifesto, she was open to ridicule.
"Weak and wobbly" started to get bounced around more and more.
May is not a charismatic person at the best of times, speaking in dull tones full of stock phrases and repetition (Did she mention how strong and stable she is?) The more people saw of her, the less they liked her.
The same was happening with her manifesto, a document obviously written on the assumption that a Tory win was inevitable so they could pretty much do whatever they wanted. The more people looked at it, the less they liked it.
Meanwhile Corbyn was having the opposite effect. The more the public saw of him and his policies the more they liked it.
In a visit to Plymouth she gave the following interview to a news paper called the Herald-
The Herald: “Two visits in six weeks to one of the country’s most marginal constituencies – is she getting worried?”
May: “I’m very clear that this is a crucial election for this country.”
TH: “Plymouth is feeling the effects of military cuts. Will she guarantee to protect the city from further pain?”
M: “I’m very clear that Plymouth has a proud record of connection with the armed forces.”
TH: “How will your Brexit plan make Plymouth better off?”
M: “I think there is a better future ahead for Plymouth and for the whole of the UK.”
TH: “Will you promise to sort out our transport links?”
M: “I’m very clear that connectivity is hugely important for Plymouth and the south-west generally.”
It became obvious to everyone that she had just gone through the whole interview without actually saying ANYTHING. You could had subbed her out with an auto chat program that just rephrases questions back as pseudo answers and it wouldn't come out much worse.
But May and the Conservatives were still confident.
I mean the media were largely still on her side, though some bad stories were starting to slip through, and a few poles saying her lead was slipping was nothing to worry about, right?
She proceeded to refuse to take part in a face to face debate with Corbyn. She would take questions from the audience and interviewer, but only separately to him.
This came to ahead when there was a live TV debate of party leaders.
Corbyn showed up....May did not.
She sent another Tory MP in her place.
I don't know what she thought would happen on that stage if she showed up, but unless she expected to shit herself, fall over and die, there was no way to get a worse result than a no show.
You could read any bad trait you wanted into it.
The Liberal Democrat Leader scoffed that May couldn't even be bothered to show up so why should the voters be bothered? He joked they should be watching the greatest British Bake Off on another channel.
May was running as strong and stable, the tough negotiator who could get a good Brexit deal...but now she was too scared to even show up to face Corbyn? And how good a negotiator could she be if she couldn't even contest a debate?
When the election finally happened, a few last minute poles said May was still on course to win the huge majority she was looking for, so everyone was fairly sure of the expected result.
And then everything went nuts.
Early exit poles immediately suggested Corbyn had done far better than expected.
As results came through, it became clear that ideas of a big majority...or indeed any majority, were a fantasy.
In UK politics, to form the government you need a majority of at least half the seats up for grabs in parliament.
May managed to get the most seats of any party, but fell short of a majority.
Keep in mind, this was in a an election she DID NOT need to hold.
She had taken a Tory majority that should have lasted another 3 years, gambled it needlessly and pissed it away.
In order to gain the extra seats to form a government, May was forced to make a deal with the DUP.
Who are the DUP you ask?
Yeah a lot of people outside of Northern Ireland were asking that same question the day after the election.
The democratic ulster unionist party are a protestant, pro union party in Northern Ireland.
They are ultra religious, had ties to Loyalist terror groups during the troubles, are homophobic, sectarian, anti catholic and don't believe in evolution.
They also now had the ability to make demands of the UK government in exchange for allowing it to function.
Yeah....
So if you think Labour didn't like May before the election...just imagine how conservatives felt about her now?
This idiot woman had run a pathetic campaign, with a shit manifesto in an election SHE DIDN'T NEED TO HOLD!
And now they were being expected to get into bed with the fucking DUP in order to hold onto the government?
May's "victory" speech sounded shell shocked, her voice trembling and just repeating the same phrases about stability she had before but with mentions of "our friends" in the DUP thrown in.
She hurried away without talking to reporters, for obvious reasons.
The calls for her resignation came from all sides (even the leader of the DUP said she couldn't see how May could continue.)
May had promised stability but had brought chaos. She had made the government weak and confused prior to some of the most important negotiations in history. What was meant to be a lap of honour had turned into a feeble limp over the finish line.
Every argument for why she needed to hold the election was now an argument for why she was an utter failure.
Hilariously, Corbyn had been accused of being sympathetic to Sinn Fein, the anti-union party in Northern Ireland during the campaign, claiming this showed he was sympathetic to terrorists.
Well at least he never formed a government with them, huh May?
What comes next?
I have no idea!
May has taken control of the wheel and driven the bus into a supermarket.
