I’ve just got here, but don’t shed a tear, because I fear, I must … be going!
Unable to face Her Majesty’s opposition and like Erdogan of Turkey wants unlimited autocratic powers? Playing games with the constitution, or plain feckless? What is Theresa May other than a pice of blotting paper?
The Woman Who Shook Hands with Trump
“No general election until 2020” her mantra for months on end, but today it’s time for a general election. The date is June 8th. “Brexit means Brexit” she repeated moronically, as if selling hot cross buns from a stall, “the British people have voted”.
And yet it doesn’t mean that at all. It means the United Kingdom is divided and needs united. But wait, no, it also means “The country (she means England) is united but the House of Commons is divided.”
Remember, this is the woman who originally advocated we ‘remain’ in Europe. And she’s already planning to use taxes to pay for systems that were once free – foreign workers will have to get a visa. We’ll need an entire new infrastructure to service that void.
How can you trust May’s word?
Theresa May’s certainty is reversed tomorrow.
Not so long ago Westminster voted overwhelmingly to place on the statute books the Fixed Term Parliament Act to avoid just this sort of cavalier approach to governance. May must now overturn that Act – an indication of how easy Westminster can annul Scotland’s Parliament.
An uncomplicated calculation
With Tories showing a 44% popularity in English ratings against other parties in the lower 20% she aims to capitalise on the surge of admiration for ‘Maggie reborn’ with a bigger majority than the shaky one currently, giving her power to ramrod through Westminster the most authoritarian, uncaring, retrogressive legislation imaginable. Neo-liberal conservatives love fox hunting.
She needs a two-thirds majority in the Commons to activate a general election. Labour, led by salty sea dog Jeremy Corbyn, instead of resisting the stupidity, promise May full support. Once more England’s Labour party offers its mortal political enemy a helping hand back to power. It could well mean Labour reduced to a rump party. As it is, if all opposition parties joined forces they could block May’s attempt at right-wing sainthood.
Flip-flop, zig-zag
Theresa May politics are all over the place one hour to the next. “Now is not the time”, “No one wants it”, “Get on with the day job”, empty slogans she’s thrown at the Scottish electorate and its government. What she is attesting is what we have known for generations: England rules the United Kingdom of nations. Whatever is in England’s interest is in all our interests. Whatever suited its agenda yesterday can be altered today, and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow if necessity is the cover for prevention.
Inept or incompetent
Now Prime Minister, the media portray Theresa May as a reborn Maggie Thatcher, strong, resolute not for turning. In that regard there are early signs May is just as unhinged: controlling of colleagues, bullying, dismissing of ideas, and if her attitude to Scotland is concerned, she’s also vindictive. Her stint at the Home Office was about as incompetent as inept can be.
One of May’s faux pas was her department’s refusal of visas to Afghan interpreters who had served with the British forces in Afghanistan under fire. Who advised her to do that? There is also nothing about May’s superhuman skills as an administrative genius that makes sense when compared to the complete collapse of the eBorders IT system. The money squandered is reputed to exceed a billion pounds.
When regaling critics over leaving Europe she invariably emits mention of Gibraltar with its 98% vote to remain in the EU. As a person as unpredictable as Trump will she protect Gibraltar from the Spanish, or will she use it as a bargaining chip with the EU?
Squeaky clean
As I write May has announced she will not take part in televised debates. That’s how much she respects the electorate. Will she change her mind at the last minute? Does it matter? Tories own the game board, the dice, and the score card.
An early General Election is a cynical throw of the dice. “We should stop playing games with politics” was her statement of intent that politics must be treated with respect. Today she plays games as only an extreme right-wing administration dare.
It’s dangerous to take the electorate for granted, to manipulate it, but that’s what May is doing. The only way to describe the move is blatant political opportunism. But inept she is for the election guarantees there will be a second Referendum on the right of Scotland to make its own choice about Europe, the very thing she hoped to avoid.
A Tory one-party state
“Scotland is currently a one party state” opined an idiotic BBC journalist oblivious to the fact that it cannot ever be so under the voting system imposed on it by Westminster, and oblivious to the fact Theresa May is planning on exactly that situation to rule the United Kingdom for … shall we say … a generation, whatever that means, but we can suppose it means twenty years or more.
Can we trust the Tory party not to engage again in creative accountancy with its electoral funds? Can anybody trust a political party that has made tax evasion a billion dollar legal business and starved its own public services in the process? Does the Tory party think voters are stupid. The answer surely is yes.
Jaundiced or cynical
Perhaps, and there’s a chance of this happening, perhaps England’s electorate have had enough of all the machinations and power playing. Maybe they see her doing as Turkey’s Erdogan did – demand more power. They might just give her the shock she deserves.
Faced with a House of Lords that wants EU nationals protected, MPs that know pulling out of Europe instead of joining with other member states to reform it is a disaster, a Northern Ireland ungoverned, and a Scotland that’s given its only dedicated party a mandate for a second Referendum on autonomy, May decides a General Election is the answer. She’s the least astute prime minister since Neville Chamberlain waved a letter in the air as he disembarked from his plane shouting “Peace for our time.”
This isn’t about greater democracy, this is about junking the constitution, the Tory party ruling till the sun sets on a new empire. Forget an election. It’s a coup.
What’s the old Scot’s saying again about warm clothing? Never cast a cloot till May’s oot”.
Grouse Beater 
Er… “Peace for our time”, and Neville Chamberlain. For the rest: shambolic, shambolic, shambolic.
“Shambolic” being Theresa May and her merry crew of japesters, Handmaiden, not you!
🙂
I now officially haven’t got a bloody clue what’s going on! 😂
I still cannot work out what she actually changes and gains with this madhatters manouevre .
Remember NI is coming to the boil and Dublin, aka the EU, is agitating tonget that mess sorted or they might just veto any deal she achieves. In fact it might be a race with Spain who plays the Joker Here?
Scotland will turn this into an Indie / EU surrogate referendum and the EU might be inclined to recognise a UDI of Scotland into the EU, making the fight between little England and the rest of Europe.
Denmark is digging out old treaties regarding fishing rights in Scottish waters to block her taking the self same to Westminster after Brexit.
This is all nuts. An army can maybe manage two fronts for a while but May is fighting a mosaic of battles on a,myriad of fronts.
There will be an almighty explosion as Brexit hits the buffers and May will do a Cameron and waltz off into her offshorebbank accounts.
We live in interesting, albeit unfathonable, times.
Anything could happen the next half hour. Thunderbirds are go.
Like Erdogan she’s asking for more power. Soon as you hear an elected official saying that it’s time they were disciplined. They were given enough power.
More power! I need more power!
Let’s make the GE the referendum. May will never agree to a separate independence referendum.
I feel it will be that no matter what issues are debated.
Well, I suppose it could all backfire horribly for TM if the English electorate or at least a good many of them have had a bellyful of Tory austerity. So for a dream scenario how about a hung parliament at WM with the SNP holding the balance of power? Not before time, surely. Would be fun to watch the tail wag the dog … especially since the ‘tail’ seems to be where most of the UK’s political nouse is located.
So sweet dreams mo chàirdean 😉
I can see Corbyn’s followers might come out in force to counter Tory-UKip numbers while overlooking his lack of charisma and not expecting him to win.
It’s a contrived effort to prevent Scotland leaving the UK. If she loses & a new PM & UK cabinet is installed, no matter from which party, they can simply call off Brexit claiming it wasn’t their idea in the first place & remove the reason the SNP needs to justify a 2nd referendum.
If she wins, she can say the British want a Tory government & that their government will never yield to the SNP.
And if there’s the slightest fall in support in Scotland for the SNP, whether it’s a loss of one MSP, one MP or even a drop in the popular vote share, May will declare that the momentum for Scottish independence has finally stopped.
This is her Culloden 2017.
Neatly done Grouse and well said.
This IS all about the Tories, England’s electorate and consolidation of power for several terms to come. It’s about the GRB and the enactment of the Henry VIII clause. Finally it’s about acceptance that some circles cannot be squared, not Brexit, not the EU and certainly not Scotland. The union after all, has effectively been over since the morning of September 19th, 2014 and Cameron’s appalling speech. The most hollow of wins in the UKs modern post war political history.
The bottom line though, is NO. PM May’s word on pretty much anything cannot be trusted. Expedience and perceived need will determine her actions. She will of course be backed by the right wing media who as ever have their own interest in this omnishambles, but no change there then.
May needs those powers (and that mandate to weild them) very badly, because it won’t take long in the next few years for the other shoe to drop on the legacy of Brexit and the constitutional vandalism of both Conservative and Labour governments past. It won’t be too long either before an extremely angry English electorate look pointedly at a politically compromised and complicit media who led them by the nose either.
Personally, I don’t think we should have any part of the eventual and inevitable conclusion to that particular drama.
I ‘m always buoyed when you drop by with a letter, Macart.
This latest move is both depressing and a challenge. I hope she’s misjudged the mood of the English people. From what I’m hearing a lot seem fed up with ‘playing politics’.
You’re not wrong. I think they are suffering badly from voter fatigue. I also think they don’t particularly like or appreciate voter participation.
Most people don’t want to think about big, complex or important issues. To use a popular term, they just want ‘shit to happen’. Mind you its taken decades for the political establishment and their media to grind such apathy and training into the electorate and of course the political class rely on this apathy and unwillingness to think. They far prefer people to respond to their media dog whistles and come when called.
It’s not going to change overnight sadly and its not going to change before or until the unthinkable happens in their own livingrooms. Which, I believe, is just about to happen to the poor souls.
The annoyance is, a united opposition could block the two-thirds majority May needs to overturn the 5-Year bill.
Yes. It is beyond annoying Grouse and yet they will still back this election I reckon.
Turkeys, Christmas…etc.