An awful night, but MPs must rally to Mrs May
THERE is no hiding from the truth. This was a dreadful night for the Conservatives, Brexit and a future for this country that had looked remarkably bright.
When the dust settles, it will become clear it was also grim for Labour, since the result has entrenched an extremist leader whose views affront countless Britons.
Indeed, with the Lib Dems failing to make headway, meaning the return of two-party politics, any hope of a responsible Opposition of the centre-Left has been dashed for the foreseeable future.
That said, it was far from the worst possible result. We will not have to endure, thank God, the nightmare of terrorist-sympathising, economically illiterate Marxists in Downing Street. In fact, Theresa May won 790,000 more votes than Labour — more, indeed, than Tony Blair’s landslide in 1997 — making Jeremy Corbyn’s ludicrous claim of victory ring decidedly hollow.
There were other consolations for the Conservatives — notably their strong revival in Scotland, where they made inroads into the nationalist vote, winning 13 seats where before they had just one. This was great for the Union, great for the Tories’ credentials as a truly national party and a huge tribute to the common sense of Scottish voters.
But, short of the calamity of a hard-Left coalition of chaos, the inescapable truth is that the overall result is pretty bad. It puts Mrs May at the mercy of Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionists and Tory malcontents, casting a cloud of uncertainty over essential government business, the economy and the Brexit process.
As for why the Conservatives’ commanding lead all but evaporated, the reasons are not hard to find. The party went to the country on a deeply flawed manifesto, drawn up by a tiny clique of advisers at No 10, committed to such vote-losing policies as a free Commons vote on foxhunting and means-testing pensioners’ winter fuel allowance.
Deeply unpopular, too — though an honest attempt to tackle a growing crisis — were the proposals for funding social care from the estates of recipients. This was instantly labelled a ‘dementia tax’ by an opportunist Opposition.
As for the U-turn that followed just days later, this was the wobble that cost the Tories their overall majority.
Mrs May and her advisers seemed to take a big win for granted, failing to trumpet their economic successes and making too little effort to woo voters young or old.
As for Mr Corbyn’s strong showing — astonishing for a neo-Marxist who has spent 40 years befriending the enemies of this country and is patently unfit for high office — there is a depressing explanation for this, too. He offered some of the biggest electoral bribes in history, making lavish promises of non-existent cash to pensioners, the public sector and those on the minimum wage. And he bribed the gullible young by pledging to scrap tuition fees and hinting he’d write off tens of billions in student debt.
Though criminally irresponsible and unaffordable, these empty promises — along with Labour’s skilful exploitation of social media — appear to have shored up Mr Corbyn’s position, luring teenagers and twentysomethings to the polling stations in unprecedented numbers.
Because of their youth, such voters have no memory of the bloodletting atrocities of the IRA, whose cause Mr Corbyn and his crony John McDonnell so sickeningly championed. Nor do they remember the economic meltdown of the Seventies, when over-mighty unions ruled the roost, cheered on by the pair of them.
Lamentably, Labour also owes much to the blatant bias of the country’s chief source of news, the BBC. During last year’s referendum, the Corporation showed commendable balance. In this election, it reverted to Left-leaning type, letting Mr Corbyn off the hook time and time again.
Not only did it fail to hold him properly to account over the madness of his spending plans, it even imposed a virtual news blackout on his links with terrorist groups.
Distastefully, the BBC also appeared to side with Labour in blaming the Manchester and London Bridge outrages on cuts in police numbers, while casting a veil over the fact that Mrs May had increased anti-terrorist manpower.
But voters have spoken — and the Prime Minister must listen both to them and to wise advisers outside her inner clique of policy wonks at No 10.
Despite the massive setback, this paper believes she has considerable strengths and deserves the chance to prove she has learned the lessons of this sorry campaign. More pertinently, we fear a leadership election could tear the Tories to pieces. With the public sick of elections, it would be crazy for MPs to undermine the support Mrs May needs to implement the people’s will over Brexit.