General Election 2017

That is a headline that was never supposed to be written. We have fixed term parliaments now. The date of the next General Election has been known since 2010. First Thursday in May 2020. The 7^th in case you were wondering.

At the time of writing it is three hours since Theresa May emerged into the Downing Street spring sunshine to say that she has reluctantly decided that there is no alternative to an early poll. She seems to believe that it will strengthen her hand in the Brexit negotiations in some ill-defined manner. Clearly she also sees an opportunity to bomb the Labour Party back to the Stone Age in a metaphorical kind of way. Who knows, she may be right.

The problem with this election compared to all the others I can remember is that there are just too many moving parts to make even a sketchy prediction of the outcome. Just a few of them are:

How will Scotland vote? A strong showing for the SNP would make another referendum on independence a racing certainty.

How will Northern Ireland vote? A poll over the weekend showed that half of those who expressed an opinion would prefer to unite with Ireland in the EU rather than staying in the UK. If it is so, how will it be expressed in a national ballot?

Will Labour unite behind Jeremy Corbyn? I could write an entire post just about this one but it is entirely conceivable that we will see the end of the Labour party as we know it if the MPs and the broader membership can’t manage to pull in the same direction for the next six weeks.

Wither UKIP? Or indeed "Whither, UKIP!". Having achieved its primary aim last year will UKIP fade away? We can hope.

Perhaps the most interesting question is about the Liberal Democrats. They say that they received 1,000 membership applications in the hour after the election announcement. Clearly this reflects the status of the Lib Dems as the party that has most identified with the European Union and offers the most obvious vehicle for a General Election vote to protest the lunacy that is Brexit. But given that Nick Clegg’s support for his chum Dave in the 2010-2015 coalition arguably got us into this mess to start with, can we actually trust the party ever again?

These questions will play out over the coming six-week campaign and no doubt some things will become clearer and others more obscure. Based on what we know now the election is about Brexit and nothing else matters this time around. All of the usual concerns about the NHS, education, security, the economy, science policy, the arts and whether chocolate eggs should be emblazoned with the word Easter will be seen through the prism of Brexit.

For me the most important question is what is the best hope of ameliorating the damage that Brexit will do? We may not be able to reverse the decision completely but the 48% need to send a strong message that Mrs May’s mulish insistence on pursuing a scorched-earth version of withdrawal cannot go unchallenged.  On that basis my initial thought is that I will set aside my resentment of the part they played in the unfolding tragedy and put my support behind the Lib Dems. Clegg was probably more naive than evil and anyway he’s mostly out of the picture now. I can’t say that I make this decision with a light heart nor that it couldn’t change as the campaign unfolds, but right here, right now my first instinct is to support Tim Farron’s team.