Jez'll Fix It (Maybe)
We had ourselves a little election, didn't we.
I'm a journalist, and I write about culture and the news and so I do not often let my ~opinion~ shine as brightly as it could. But listen: you cannot have read more than a couple of pieces I've written over the years (or seen the publications and outlets I have written for) and not make an educated guess as to what I stand for politically. All that to say, I was not entirely displeased with the result of the UK election. I felt the flames of a hope I thought had long died licking at the inside of my chest wall and I didn't extinguish it. I let it grow gently over the course of the night as returning officer after returning officer delivered surprise after surprise.
The biggest source of the oxygen that kept that fire going? The turnout. It was most advantageous to Labour, but it was not exclusively those voters who came out. It was noticeably higher than at the last election according to many news outlets (I refuse to repeat the as yet unconfirmed stat that the youth vote was at 72% here). Imagine! My local constituency had about a 66% turnout (I sent my vote by post, but I will be voting by proxy next time, for sure) and I squealed when I saw our result. I watched it all unfold, breathless as I consumed my iftar. Was this a Ramadan miracle? Well, kind of! The reality is that this result was rooted in a good old grassroots campaign. People went out and knocked on doors and talked to voters. And yes, some of this was to fuck Theresa May and her party, and yes, some of it was being shook enough by the way the Brexit chatter had been going. But also important? People liked what Corbyn and his surrogates had to say. That's it. Dassit!
I think it burns a good proportion of the press to say so. Because they were wrong, and they said—over and over—that Corbyn was unelectable, and that his hard left ideas would harm him and his party by turning off voters. And then on Thursday, people got off their backsides and essentially said, actually, we like the cut of his jib, and we are interested in these ideas. Mr Corbyn has mildly suggested Mrs May live up to her pre-election promise to step aside if the Tories lost six seats (they'd lost 13 at the time 643 seats had been declared). Theresa May is instead talking of a coalition government with the DUP now, which is...somewhat alarming, but not a single one of us is that unfamiliar with the admittance of strange bedfellows when we are looking to get something. Just how competent would Mr Corbyn be at governing? Well, who can tell? Right this minute Mrs May appears determined to stay in power. At what cost? It's a mildly thrilling and terrifying thing to be watching from afar (and I can't imagine it's a picnic up close) but I am unable to look away. I do not live there at the moment, but it's home and I haven't stopped caring just yet, even as foreign vowel sounds threaten to usurp my crisper original tones...
I started the day watching the Comey hearing and ended it scrolling Twitter and listening to the BBC via the internet. I felt like the full dustbag of a busy vacuum cleaner: dirty and the recipient of a lot of rubbish. But also – warm with the reassuring exertion of usefulness.
That was clumsily described. But here we are.