CRYING GAME
Babies, bribes and boxing… the highs and lows of the 2019 campaign trail
PROMISES, promises, promises. Voters could be forgiven for feeling their heads are spinning over the array of goodies that have been pledged by the main parties as they seek to entice – or bribe – voters to their cause.
The Tories’ extra spending on public services – more on healthcare, education and police – is for south of the Border but it would hand the Scottish Government a multi-billion pound consequential windfall.
Boris Johnson decided to forego a cut in company tax, instead raising the National Insurance threshold – seen politically as targeting lower-paid workers who are regarded by Tory strategists as key to backing Brexit.
The Conservative leader also learned from some of Theresa May’s campaign mistakes and kept to a “don’t-scare-the-horses” manifesto-lite approach.
A key pledge was the Minister for the Union’s determination to rule out “for good” another Scottish independence referendum while raising the spectre of a Corbynsturgeon “coalition of chaos”.
And then, of course, there was the big one: getting Brexit done.
The Prime Minister used an array of metaphors to keep it front and centre, including driving a bulldozer through a nine-foot Styrofoam wall marked “gridlock”.
Labour’s Christmas box of delights was on an even mightier scale.
The renationalisation of public utilities would mean the state becoming much bigger.
Big business and the better-off were targeted with tax rises to pay for a splurge of an extra £83 billion a year on public services.
And, of course, given Labour’s postmanifesto commitment to compensate the so-called Waspi women, borrowing would jump by another £58bn, slapping well over £400bn on the nation’s credit card for the parliament.
One interesting figure was that, for every pound the Tories would spend on public services, Labour would splash out £28.
As ever, smoke and mirrors were deployed with the Institute for Fiscal Studies pointing out neither the Tories nor Labour were “being honest” with voters about the tax hikes needed to fund their spending plans.
Indeed, honesty was, as ever, another central factor in the campaign.
One notable moment came during the BBC Question Time leaders’ special when the deeply sceptical audience laughed with derision at some of Mr Johnson’s and Jeremy Corbyn’s responses.
Time and again, the PM’S integrity was questioned, such as when the father of one of the London Bridge terror attack victims accused him of seeing only a political opportunity in his son’s death and not simply a tragedy, and also when the Conservative leader insisted there would be no customs border down the Irish Sea despite official documents saying otherwise.
The key moment came when Mr Johnson failed to look at a picture of a four-year-old boy waiting on a hospital floor for treatment and pocketed the reporter’s phone. Labour branded him a “disgrace”.
The episode played into its hands not just on the Tory leader’s integrity but also on its key theme of NHS underfunding.
But Mr Corbyn did not have it all his own way either on the issue of trust.
After being denounced by the Chief Rabbi over his handling of antisemitism within Labour, the party leader’s big reveal on how UK-US trade talks meant the NHS was
“up for sale” was somewhat overshadowed by suggestions Russian hackers had leaked the papers.
Then there was Labour’s worst own goal with Jonathan Ashworth, the shadow health secretary, being caught on tape saying Labour’s chances of winning were “dire” and voters “couldn’t stand” Mr Corbyn.
It was noticeable how as each party sought to keep the campaign on its terms, certain senior figures had been “disappeared”.
So, no trace of Jacob Rees-mogg, post his Grenfell gaffe, nor of
Labour Remainer Keir Starmer as Labour HQ sought to target Leavers in northern England.
The Conservative strategy to protect their leader as much as possible meant he avoided the forensic interrogation.
After Mr Corbyn suffered a car-crash interview at the hands of Andrew Neil, Tory HQ clearly decided it was better to take the hit of not facing the Scot’s laser beam of inquiry rather than suffer the humiliation of being burnt to shreds on prime time telly.
The Tory protect-the-leader strategy even, at one point, forced Mr Johnson into a fridge to escape the hostile fire of Good Morning Britain’s Piers Morgan.
As the Liberal Democrats’ hubris evaporated, going from forming a majority government to stopping Mr Johnson getting a Commons majority, Jo Swinson perhaps pinpointed the key moment of the entire election when Nigel Farage decided to withdraw Brexit Party candidates from Tory-held seats.
Today’s result will prove whether this was the crucial development or whether the great unknown of tactical voting by Leavers and Remainers could decide who gets to enter Downing Street.
Parties ‘at each other’s throats’
THE election campaign in Scotland started at the end of October as it meant to go on – with the SNP and Tories at each other’s throats, their traditional comfort zone, and Labour in its niche, a muddle on the constitution.
Scottish Labour leader Richard Leonard was on the back foot from his first event, having to react to a shadow cabinet member saying a Labour government “wouldn’t stand in the way” of Indyref2.
Mr Leonard declared there was “no prospect” of a second referendum with the election of a Labour government.
Back in the real world there was no prospect of hope beating arithmetic.
Jeremy Corbyn’s team knew they weren’t going to return many if any MPS in Scotland, and so needed the SNP’S numbers to keep them in power in a hung parliament. Mr Leonard changed his tune. Boris Johnson’s first visit to Scotland for the campaign a week later was also telling.
On a flying visit to a distillery in Elgin, he launched a double-headed attack on Nicola Sturgeon and Mr Corbyn, calling them “yoke-mates of destruction” as he vowed to block Indyref2.
It became a running theme of his campaign – the proposition that only a thumping Tory majority would do, as a hung parliament would mean a Labour-snp axis and two more referendums in 2020.
The visit also showcased another theme of Mr Johnson’s election – his reluctance to offer himself for scrutiny and to hide from the electorate.
Asked why he wasn’t meeting any Scottish voters – again – on his trip, the best answer he could come up with was to say the Guardian’s reporter was a voter and a member of the public so therefore he had met one.
Mr Corbyn’s first visit the following week was equally revealing.
He was immediately and repeatedly confused on independence – the issue above all else he should have seen would be the subject of the media’s questions.
He snapped at them and scolded them for not asking about what he wanted to talk about.
In the course of a day he changed his position three times, saying Indyref2 would not happen in the “first term” of a Labour government and suggesting he would ignore even an SNP majority win at the 2021 Holyrood election.
After much contortionism,
Labour’s position finally became that it would not have Indyref2 in the early years of it being in power, meaning the 2021 result would be critical to securing it.
What it showed above all was that Labour HQ had already written off Scotland as electorally insignificant. If it had mattered, Mr Corbyn would have done his homework and had a clear position.
That he didn’t, indicated the party had little faith in holding its seven Scottish seats.
However the confusion was all on Mr Corbyn’s part.
Scottish Secretary Alister Jack also muddied the Tory position days later by telling BBC Radio Scotland that, contrary to the Prime Minister’s emphatic refusals, an SNP majority win in 2021 would be a “democratic mandate” after all, and Ruth
Davidson thought so too.
Mr Jack, a Borders version of Jacob
Rees-mogg, was seldom heard from again.
The SNP’S position began to evolve too. Having started the campaign saying an SNP vote was a vote “to escape Brexit”, Nicola Sturgeon said even if the UK did escape Brexit, by voting Remain in a new referendum, she wanted Indyref2 regardless.
Until now, she had claimed a mandate based on Brexit being a “significant and material change in the circumstances that prevailed in 2014”. Now she lowered the bar to the floor, saying Westminster’s general attitude was enough to justify it. It was all fuel to the Scottish Tory campaign.
Scottish Labour launched its manifesto with a promised return to the party’s radical roots in power, with Mr Leonard saying he wanted to recapture the spirit of Red Clydeside.
Ms Sturgeon’s worst moment came in the chair opposite the BBC’S Andrew Neil, when she was pummelled over her party’s record in power, particularly on problems on health.
She also said an independent Scotland would embark on a currency “journey”, taking in the pound and something else down the line, a less than reassuring answer that showed the party still hasn’t nailed down the basics of its core policy.
The last week of November saw three manifesto launches. First, Mr Johnson returned for his second final visit, to hammer home the pro-union, anti-sturgeon theme.
The party’s Scottish manifesto was titled simply “No2indyref2”. Mr Johnson gave a “guarantee” he would never allow the break-up of the Union on his watch.
Acting Scottish Tory leader Jackson Carlaw said he thought the SNP’S once-in-a-generation mantra of 2014 should mean no Indyref2 until 2054 at the least.
After Mr Johnson left, he was summarily dropped from the Scottish party’s vocabulary.
Mr Carlaw started giving speeches that failed to mention his candidate for Prime Minister, and instead harped relentlessly on Ms Sturgeon and blocking another independence vote.
The very next day, Ms Sturgeon gave him an early Christmas present with the launch of the SNP manifesto.
Although the backdrop of the event said “Stop Brexit”, the words that caught everyone’s attention were on page 10: a vote for the SNP was an endorsement of Indyref2 in 2020.
An SNP win would be a “clear instruction” on that, the First Minister said.
“We could have written that ourselves,” said one veteran Tory campaigner afterwards.
The event also saw Ms Sturgeon face questions about her willingness to work with Mr Corbyn given the criticism he faced over anti-semitism in his party.
Her vow to take a zero tolerance approach to bigotry would lead a few days later to the suspension of the SNP’S candidate in Kirkcaldy & Cowdenbeath. The Tories also suspended two of their candidates and Labour one of theirs.
Finally, Willie Rennie launched the Scottish Libdem manifesto to half a dozen activists in a room above an ice rink. With his party’s national campaign declining, it was an odd affair.
In keeping with his party’s extreme position on overturning Brexit without a referendum, he said he would never, ever support Indyref2, no matter the numbers at Holyrood. He would not even allow Indyref2 in return for a referendum on Brexit, he said.
The campaign puttered out with Mr Carlaw condemning and apologising for Mr Johnson’s past remarks about Muslim women, gay men and gun control after the Dunblane massacre.
The final days were also characterised by a new intensity in the slanging match.
Ms Sturgeon said Mr Johnson was a bigger threat to Scotland than Mrs Thatcher.
Ruth Davidson said some voters now called Ms Sturgeon “that effing woman”. It was a fittingly grumpy end to a joyless campaign.