The Binside Track on Election 2024!
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YES. Election time is here! And Rishi couldn’t have picked a better day. LITTERally.
I’m writing to you, dear Countbinistas, a mere 24 Earth hours since the Prime Minister set his own judgement day, when he will go from being Rishi Soon-Axed to Rishi Soon-Bound-For-LAX. So much enjoyable chaos is already spewing out of Westminster that for politicians like me it’s Christmas, the Olympics and a bin lorry trade show all come at once.
We must start, of course, with the most poetically bad launch of a General Election in democratic history. Some people have speculated that the reason Rishi didn’t use an umbrella was so he wouldn’t get the ‘Steve McLaren treatment’ and become labelled ‘the wally with the brolly’. I’m going to hazard a guess that the PM is as cognisant of England’s 2007 Euros qualifier with Croatia as he is with contactless payment machines. But I’ll also wager that someone on his Downing Street staff was worried about the comparison. The thing is, though, that Steve McLaren’s wallydom was less to do with a desire to shield himself from the rain than the fact that his tactics were a shitshow of Trussian magnitude. So it’s a very apt comparison indeed.
The fact is, fact fans, that Tory High Command was on the point of pushing the election button from Monday. Incidentally, my last blog post was entitled ‘Just another week on Planet Rishi… or is it?’ Did I know something that it took journalists a further 24 hours to cotton onto? Let’s just say that sometimes having a time machine is very handy indeed. Which is why I’m so frickin’ annoyed that I lost it, especially as the number one thing I would need to find it again is a frickin’ time machine. What’s even more satisfying than journalists being slow on the uptake is the fact that legions of Conservative MPs and activists were caught completely on the hop too. There are reportedly 93 constituencies where the Tories haven’t even chosen their candidate yet, for an election they could have waited another seven months to hold. If that’s not enough to have them seething, think about all the parliamentarians and support staff who are about to be denied an extra half-year of their juicy salaries. Diddums.
Why did he call the election, then? There are only four possibilities:
He’s had enough and frankly can’t wait to jet off to Silicon Valley to start a new life away from the rain, the Rwanda bill and Grant Shapps.
He knows he can’t fulfil his five infernal pledges, so leaving early means less egg on his face.
His MPs were on the point of mutiny and the number of no-confidence letters hitting the doormat of the 1922 Committee had grown so fast that, incredibly, a General Election had become his best chance of survival.
He’s just a really terrible politician.
I should add that these alternatives are not mutually exclusive.
Anyway, there’ll be plenty of time to laugh at Rishi’s helter-skelter ride to doom over the next six weeks. [Asking Welsh people if they’re going to be watching the Euros? Keep it coming, Rish.] But let’s not only dwell on the critically-endangered Conservative Party. What else has happened on Day One (or Two) of this already classic campaign?
FOOL ME TICE
The Reform Party, now shorn of its cowardly mascot and human Toby Jug Nigel Farage, launched its campaign with leader Richard ‘Fool Me’ Tice standing behind an eye-catching graph hinting that immigration to the UK has grown exponentially since 1997. Curiously, though, the X axis for the graph begins at AD 1066, and as @generalboles pointed out (appropriately enough on ‘X’), ‘I’m not a podcaster but I think there was some immigration in 1066.’ Not that I’m here to give the Reform Party anything but an electoral kicking, but they might want to have another think about their slogan too. ‘To freeze immigration’ would surely mean to keep the status quo, which in historical terms is still at a record high. Maybe that is their new policy and they’ve reformed themselves? What a bunch of wokey snowflakes.
EARLY LABOUR
There is a school of thought that the best thing the Labour Party can do between now and election day is to say and do precisely NOTHING. After all, this strategy has bought them a 25-point lead in the polls, so why change? Change is of course the operative word for Labour. So much so that it’s become the entire slogan of their campaign launch. O Dominic Cummings, you thought you’d reinvented politics with your three-word slogans like Take Back Control and Get Brexit Done. But pish! Nowadays that is mere child’s play. Labour’s Starm Troopers have gone much further and taken this philosophy almost* to its apex: the one-word slogan. CHANGE. The theory behind this is brilliant. By saying the bare minimum, it lets voters fill in the blank (nay, yawning chasm) with their own favourite things they’d like to be changed. They’re right of course, because if a government had done literally nothing since 2010 and today, the UK would genuinely be in a more prosperous position than it is now. I’m hoping Labour pushes through with this when they publish their manifesto. If it turns out to be full of blank pages, it would be honourably consistent, and it would give people a new exercise book too.
SCOTLAND THE GRAVE
The SNP are consummate masters at spinning any political eventuality into proof of mistreatment of Scotland by the hated Westminster elite. (Tbf sometimes they’ve got a point.) Their opening salvo in this election campaign has been to rail against Rishi’s election timing, on the basis that it coincides with the school holidays in Scotland (but not England). You can see their thinking - distract the voters from the get-go with a bit of classic hard-done-by-ness. It makes sense. After all, the SNP have been in power at Holyrood for a long time now, and their record is patchy at best. Amusingly similar to those hated Tories down South. Luckily for John Swinney & Co, what might have been a difficult start to the campaign got a lot easier thanks to Rishi Sunak making yet another idiotic mistake - showing his face. As if that wasn’t enough on its own to send ‘YES’ rocketing a few points higher in the next independence poll, the Prime Minister had the nerve to call the SNP ‘out of touch’ with Scots. That they might be, but maybe not compared to a Winchester-educated toff worth £651 million who doesn’t know how to dress in the rain.
LIB DEMS
Yeah, I haven’t noticed them yet either.
BINFACE NEWS
I’ll sign off with a bit of news from Count Binface HQ, which is to say that I am delighted to give you the first official confirmation that I intend to stand in the election, if I am honoured to receive sufficient nominations. When it comes to picking a constituency I am wonderfully spoiled for choice: there’s so much low-hanging fruit to pick from. Liz Truss, Lee Anderson, Jeremy Hunt, Michael Gove, Jonathan Gullis, Grant Shapps, the list goes on and on. I would be licking my lips, if I had any lips. Of course there might be one other seat I’ve also got my visor on, but that would be telling…
Galactic peace and love,
CB x
*The final nadir will come in the 2029 election, when each party slogan will be reduced to the poo emoji.