General Election 2017 Results

Oscar Wilde once said: "Confidence is good, but overconfidence sinks the ship." Theresa May's Tory ship has been well and truly scuppered by her incredible hubris. She called the snap general election in April, see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/general-election-snap.html, also see the background links at the bottom. It must have felt to her like a formality. She believed the polls that gave the Conservatives a 23 point lead on their rivals, the Labour Party. After the 2015 general election they had 330 seats over Labour's 232 and the forecast was for a landslide increase to over 400, a 50% majority; the biggest since Thatcher in the 80's. However this has turned out to be a catastrophic misjudgement. Theresa May's dreams of being the new Margaret Thatcher are in tatter. The full results are so bad that even though the Conservatives didn't lose government to Labour they might as well have. We now have a hung parliament. Mrs May's false sense of security has destroyed her party's majority altogether. There has been a massive swing against the Conservatives that has lost them twelve seats. Ironically the Scottish National Party's losses in Scotland have cushioned the blow slightly because they're mostly to the Tories; strange to see blue on the map in Scotland at all. Jeremy Corbyn's Labour has exceeded all expectations gaining a whopping 29 seats. Corbyn has been a tabloid joke for months now, for example see: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/corbyn-falls-asleep-on-train.html. He who laughs last definitely laughs loudest. No doubt this will be blamed on "populism" or Russian hackers. In Wales little has changed, except Plaid Cymru have taken Ceredigion from the Liberal Democrats; this is where I come from. See here for the full results: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/election/2017. What will be the outcome of this pandemonium? Can the Conservatives hold on to government now? They could form another coalition with the Liberal Democrats, but it will be a very one-sided affair. Despite their opportunistic appeal to the Remoaners the Lib Dems have only gained four seats giving them twelve overall. What's more their previous experience of being junior partner in a crooked coalition with the David Cameron Government plc was devastating to their party. Would their dwindling membership permit a replay of 2010? Their influence on the alliance would be almost non-existent. What is the moral and practical imperative? Helping the Tories out of the hole they dug for themselves? The good news is that what I was concerned about here, http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/lib-dems-instruments-of-treason.html, now cannot happen. Technically a new Tory-Lib Dem coalition might involve a second referendum, but I can't see the Conservatives agreeing to it; and they'll be in a position to dictate completely all the terms. This would not be what Nick Clegg called "our chance at government!", it would be the party acting as a dampener on the next step in the melee that follows a hung parliament, plugging the holes in the Tory's shattered dyke with their little yellow fingers.

Hung Parliaments are becoming more common. There have only been three since 1900, but they've all taken place since 1974. That first hung parliament limped on for nine months and then the deadlock was broken by a new general election that made Labour's Harold Wilson Prime Minister. The most likely outcome now is a repeat of that, although it may not even last as long. There will be another general election, probably before the New Year. For those who are tired of elections, the campaigning, the party political broadcasts and canvassing etc, you're going to be disappointed because it's going to carry on. The only thing that can save us from that would be a coalition and that is not possible, in my view, as I say above. Even on the other side; if Labour could schmooze the minority parties into joining them, which it could never manage, it would literally need all of them, including the Northern Ireland rivals the Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. It's not going to happen. A minority government on either side can never last. What will this mean for Britain leaving the European Union? There might be some kind of new move towards a "soft Brexit". My concern is that we might end up like Norway, nominally independent, but locked into the common market. It would be a "half-Brexit" and may set in motion covert moves to suck us back in altogether. The EU commission have already announced a possible delay in the Article 50 talks. Can Theresa May remain Prime Minister after this cataclysm? The question ought to be: will her party members allow her even to remain alive? She better keep her bodyguards close! Jeremy Corbyn is now going to keep on marching. His enemies within his party will never be able to justify a third attempt to unseat him; he really is their Donald Trump. He has an energy and enthusiasm that leaves the Tories reeling in his wake. He has slaughtered Mrs May in the debates... the few she actually dared to show her face at. He actually ran onto stage in Wales yesterday. His hustings have had the largest attendance since Winston Churchill's in the 1950's. He is going to carb up on his victory last night and by the next election; or maybe "part 2" of this election, he could gain a majority. The Tories will have to regroup and repair very well indeed to stop him. Prime Minister May has made no public statement yet, but her office has revealed that she has no plans to resign. How realistic is that?
HPANWO TV update: http://hpanwo-tv.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/general-election-2017-results.html.

See here for background: http://hpanwo-radio.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/programme-239-podcast-general-election.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/reconsidering-voting.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/general-election-result.html.

And: http://hpanwo-voice.blogspot.co.uk/2016/11/conspiracy-theorists-finally-proved.html.