The election campaign has only just begun and is already looking like the most bizarre one in living memory. We expect the howls of faux-outrage when a leading politician says something that can be twisted in an outraged misquote to build a Twitterstorm, and we expect tumults over tiny things that convulse political insiders but leave the rest of the voters just puzzled, if uncomfortable that something has happened, and even if we do not know what it was, well, it was bad if those who understand it think it was.
We have also come to expect SkyNews acting as the broadcasting wing of the Labour Party.
The Liberal Democrat leaflets with dishonest bar charts and made-up voting figures? That’s practically compulsory in any election
No; the bizarre thing is the pattern in the sudden loss of leading candidates, and the reappearance of others thought disposed of.
Tom Watson – the Deputy Leader of the Labour Party no less. If you are heading into an election with an unpopular leader seen widely as a lunatic, then you need an apparently sane man aboard as a reassurance, but now he is gone. Even as his papers were about to go in, he is gone – out of the deputy-leadership and not standing for his seat. The timing is unspeakable. He was the one the Labour Party kept in so the Party did not look too swivel-eyed. Except of course that Tom Watson entered the ‘loony’ category when he championed ‘Nick’ the fantasist in his accusations against respected, innocent figures. Momentum tried to depose Tom Watson for no being a Communist, but perhaps the dead knife was wielded by one of his victims: Harvey Proctor pledged to stand against him, and remind the voters of what he had done.
Then came Chris Williamson – kicked out because he could not see that expressions commonplace in Germany in the 1930s might not be appropriate in a civilised society. He has reappeared, not for Labour but standing against their candidate, as an independent, at least at the time of writing. Regrettably, he is unlikely to split the red vote too badly. Only a cynic surely would suggest that he is just after the cash settlement that outgoing MPs get only if they stand and are defeated.
Then there are Brexit Party candidates standing aside in droves, on the basis that they do not want to win votes that could more usefully go elsewhere.
This is only Day 1. What monsters will the next 6 weeks bring us? Popcorn please.
