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Philip Fisher ponders the election result
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The Thinker - August Rodin

What now?

by
9th Jun 2017
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It is hard to believe that my pre-election column only appeared yesterday. In less than 24 hours, the country has changed beyond recognition.

Instant reactions can be embarrassingly wrong but here are some initial observations to get all accountants thinking about the future.

  1. Nothing in the world of politics will ever again be predictable. This is the third time in a year that so many of us, not to mention the experts, have been completely confounded by election results. First Europe, then America and now the United Kingdom.
  2. Within that 12 month period, every major British political party has had a change of leader, most of the old guard departing in ignominy. We are now going to see more of the same. Ironically, Jeremy Corbyn may survive longer than any of his peers (several of whom will probably become Peers before the year is out).
  3. This election was supposed to be the sure-fire winner that would consolidate negotiations with Europe. In those terms, it is an unmitigated disaster.
  4. Theresa May is probably searching around her relatively new home in Downing Street in an effort to find the sword to fall upon.
  5. We are supposed to be telling Europe where to go in nine days’ time. With no mandate for any kind of proper negotiation, this seems like pie in the sky.
  6. It looks as if an unholy alliance between the Conservatives and the Democratic Union Party in Northern Ireland will just about the able to run the country. It is hard to believe that anybody (outside fewer than half of the voters in Northern Ireland) would want that.
  7. For anyone that saw James Graham’s wonderful play This House the landscape is going to look familiar. It is also pretty depressing, because, while the efforts of the Labour Party to remain in office during the 1970s were fascinating and amusing in equal measure, the traumas the country will face with a government that has to rely on MPs rising from their sick beds and flying back from overseas to stay in power do not bode well for the future.
  8. I challenge anybody to work out what the electorate now wants. It is easy to determine what they don’t want. Over half of the country doesn’t want Theresa May. Over half of the country doesn’t want Jeremy Corbyn. Does anyone want Boris Johnson? That could be the natural consequence of this bizarre, hung Parliament.
  9. A word of warning to those supporting the Conservatives. One of the main reasons for their current woes (on top of the obvious conclusion above) was the youth vote. It doesn’t take a lot of thinking to work out that old people get older and cease to vote (under sad circumstances. They are replaced by young people who are likely to vote radically. This suggests that by the time of the next election, which might only be months away, Labour could be greatly strengthened, particularly if more young prospective voters see what their friends have achieved and register to exercise them democratic right next time around.
  10. Looking more specifically at our own interests, the dangers of what became known as a Hard Brexit would seem to have diminished for better or worse. This is likely to provide greater stability, although the short-term uncertainty is unlikely to be good for anybody.
  11. The tax manifestos of the major parties were starkly different. One of the negotiating points over the next Parliament could well be our tax landscape. This is much more likely to be the case if Labour has significant influence.
  12. At the moment, most of the conversation is about a Conservative government with no majority. How about a Conservative-Labour coalition. This is either the best of all worlds or the worst depending upon your outlook.

There are fun times ahead!

Replies (11)

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Tornado
By Tornado
09th Jun 2017 11:53

Just for the record - (with one seat to go)

A) The Conservatives are the party with the most seats.

B) The Conservatives received more votes than any other party.

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By mabzden
09th Jun 2017 16:57

I've got to say the Tories ran possibly the worst campaign I've ever seen. Their attitude was "we're going to win, so let's tell people the bad news now so they can't complain when we whack them later on".

Hence the dementia tax, means testing pensioners, hinting at NI rises etc etc etc.

A manifesto is a sales pitch to the nation, and more specifically to your actual or possible supporters. And there wasn't one single thing in there for anyone to get excited or inspired about.

So what's next? Lots of struggles getting legislation through, u-turns at the first hint of trouble, currency turbulence, fragile investor and consumer confidence and probably more inflation.

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By DotasScandalDotOrg
09th Jun 2017 16:32

Simply terminal hubris. Tories forgot that when you keep backstabbing all your natural / historical electorate (e.g. the self-employed, the entrepreneurial), at some point you start running out of people eager to vote for you.

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By A mum and an accountant
10th Jun 2017 00:09

Originally, I had thought a hung parliament might have been a good thing but now I'm wondering if the new coalition is a good or bad thing. DUP seem to have more bad points than good about it.

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Replying to Lilac1:
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By mabzden
12th Jun 2017 11:53

I was reading about Arlene Foster in the paper this morning and I was quite impressed.

When she was 16 the school bus she was travelling on was blown up by the IRA (because the driver was apart time member of the UDR) and her father (a member of the security services) was shot and injured on his doorstep. But she went on to work in government with Sinn Fein, and attended Martin McGuinness's funeral with his hard-line republican pals.

The DUP is socially conservative and has some policies I definitely don't agree with. But at the same time the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland are more religious than mainland Britain and have been slower to adopt progressive social policies. Gay marriage is now allowed in the Irish Republic, but abortion is still illegal unless the mother's life is at risk.

So, while I disagree with some of the DUP's policies, they need to be viewed in context. And hopefully they'll modernise over time and become more in line with our views.

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Tornado
By Tornado
10th Jun 2017 10:31

Setting aside the mass hysteria of the media about what a disaster the election has been, I am beginning to think that an alliance between the Conservatives and the DUP may actually be quite a good thing.

There are long established links between the two parties and they are both pro-Brexit with the DUP wanting a soft border between the North and the South. A landslide victory for May might have given her too much control of the situation so as inconvenient as it will be, there will be an opportunity for an effective opposition in Parliament to steer the Brexit talks in a direction that may be acceptable to most.

There is is no doubt in my mind that there was a massive vote for Labour from the young, which is partly understandable as Grandad Jeremy did promise them a lot of sweets to vote for him. The problem here is that, understandably, being young means that you have a lot to learn, which is a basic fact. I am speaking from experience here and admit that in my young days my vote was influenced by many things, including the desire not to vote the way my parents did.

The good point arising from this is that hopefully many of those new young voters will have a great deal more experience in Politics by the time of the next election and will be able to vote based on rational reasoning rather than blatant bribes. I do not particularly care which Party they vote for as long as they clearly know why they are voting for it, and are not influenced by transparent bribes from any Party.

The first lesson some of those youngsters will learn is that those who voted for Labour based on the sweeties being offered by Grandad, will receive nothing and voting is a bit more complex than might at first meet the eye.

Whilst Labour did well, in practice their improvement is only marginal over their 2015 performance, so I see no Victory here. A victory would have been to actually win the election, and they were a long way off doing that. Perhaps next time they can pull it off.

One of the most bizarre and amusing moments of the Election was when Grandad Jeremy offered to form a Government after this election (I expect he was very tired).

Another interesting point of note is that both the Conservatives and the DUP have women leaders. The Conservative leader in Scotland and the SNP leader are both women. The Greens have two leaders, one of whom is a woman, yet there has never been a woman leader of the Labour Party ..... although I have seen many worthy candidates over time. What is going on there then?

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By mabzden
10th Jun 2017 11:37

The DUP has a toxic edge to them. I have a teenage daughter, and she's been reading posts on social media about their opposition to abortion and gay marriage. So the coalition isn't exactly going to endear the Tories to young voters.

That said, if I were Tory leader and the DUP ever threatened to withhold support, I would pull out my crumpled photo of Corbyn meeting Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness and say "so you'd rather this guy is PM then??".

So I doubt the Tories will need to offer a single concession to the DUP.

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Replying to mabzden:
Tornado
By Tornado
10th Jun 2017 13:03

Your post does illustrate the way that the young can be influenced, particularly these days by the hugely powerful social media, but we were all the same in our own eras and as we grew older we were able to form opinions based on a much wider range of information sources. Hence my assumption that the young, like your daughter, may have a more balanced opinion by the time of the next election, even if that is the same as their initial one.

History chronicles the dramatic changes in social acceptability over time and whilst the DUP may currently have some views on abortion and gay marriage that are not in line with the current general consensus, those views are already more diluted than in the past and any alliance with the Conservatives is more likely to change the DUP stance than the Conservatives. Most would view that as a positive outcome of the alliance.

The danger with Grandad Corbyn is that, unlike Diane Abbot, he does not tell us that the views he has held in the past have changed.

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Tornado
By Tornado
10th Jun 2017 16:37

I have just seen the analysis of how people voted and it is clear that a massive majority of the young (18-24) voted Labour.

I also note that in each age range upwards, a greater percentage voted Conservative than Labour so that in the 65+ range the majority voted Conservative.

This does not surprise me as age does bring experience and enhanced knowledge which tends to lead us to vote on the facts rather than the fantasy.

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Replying to Tornado:
Wild Billy Hickok
By Wild Billy
11th Jun 2017 16:00

Tornado wrote:

This does not surprise me as age does bring experience and enhanced knowledge which tends to lead us to vote on the facts rather than the fantasy.

But not humility clearly.

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By justsotax
12th Jun 2017 11:15

indeed...whilst TM has overseen a disaster....it is only right to blame the voter's rather than taking personal responsibility.

Just like brexit and trump, politicians need to provide their vision and then sell it. It is not that TM didn't have a vision, she merely chose not to tell anyone, and instead hide in the closet.

I don't have any faith in 'granddad corbyn' myself, but at least he had the balls to front up, which gave him his time to sell his vision (sweets n all apparently).

I am also amused by the sudden change from first past the post to we won the most seats/votes. I am sure TM has slept well on that over the last few days having had more MP's before she entered this....

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