Grandstanding in Bad Faith

Thank you Theresa May for confirming my argument. When she took to her favourite podium this afternoon and denounced the European Union for interfering in the General Election, the cynicism scale on my sideboard broke. Just like her predecessor, who frequently put the short-term electoral interests of the Conservative Party above all else, the Prime Minister's (contrived) paranoia is putting the Brexit negotiations in jeopardy just so she can grub a few ballots from the four or five per cent of voters stubbornly sticking with UKIP. If that isn't Conservative Party decadence in its purest elemental state, I don't know what is.

The sad fact is May will probably get away with it. She and Crosby know full well the character of the anti-politics vote that underpinned last year's Leave vote. For many leave voters, it was a protest against an intangible sense of 'them'. And 'them' could be coded any which way. Politicians (of all parties, especially the LibLabCon), bankers, Eurocrats, cultural Marxists, brown people, immigrants. It was a protest against globalisation, but in exactly the same way Marine Le Pen articulates such a sentiment. When the labour movement is down and not articulating a positive alternative to the status quo, other sentiments and ideas rush into the vacuum. Across the Middle East, religion is the basis of opposition to corrupt and dictatorial establishments in too many Arab countries. In the countries of Europe, a yearning for community in a fragmenting and rapidly changing world finds crumbs of comfort in the flag. After all, things ain't what they used to be but we're still bloody British, dammit.

May is trying to ride that wave to a thumping majority, setting herself up as a mother-of-the-nation figure that Thatcher, because of her divisiveness, never accomplished. You might not like the Tories, which is why their name is banished from so much campaign literature, but you can trust May to stand up to Johnny Foreigner. Pompous, stupid, pathetic, but again, she's trying to create a sense that Britain is under siege, that Britain's Brexit decision is in danger, and only by getting behind Theresa May can we ensure that 'they' don't succeed in thwarting The Will of The People.

The irony of this posturing is, of course, that the EU would much prefer to have Theresa May at the head of the British government than the alternative. With Brexit, all May is seeking is a withdrawal, albeit in the hope that some privileged access to markets can remain in situ. A Jeremy Corbyn Brexit, however, would be framed in terms of workers rights, state intervention in the economy, and other Labour left nostrums. Not helpful for a Europe led by the centre right for whom the radical and populist left are a loud and sometimes viable vehicle for discontent. They look at the polls and believe Labour's chances of winning are remote, which is just as well because that prospect terrifies them as much as it does London-based tabloid editors.

As we have seen, May thinks she's got it in the bag. Which is why we have no promises around tax, VAT, and National Insurance rises. Why the Tories have gone all vague over the pensions' triple lock. Why she hides from the public and makes like a Dalek with her soundbites. And why she can engage in the most cynical stirring of nationalism seen in British politics for decades. The more she keeps piling up the absurdities, the greater the chance of getting found out and falling short of her electoral objectives. In that case, perhaps we on the left should be encouraging her to do more grandstanding in bad faith.