The CONSERVATIVES HAVE ‘NOT’ WON THE GENERAL ELECTION 2017 WITH AN ABSOLUTE MAJORITY!

THE LABOUR PARTY HAVE ‘NOT’ WON THE GENERAL ELECTION 2017 WITH THE MOST SEATS!

This General Election outcome is nothing short of a disaster for this Country as it creates an unstable uncertain environment with the next government, whoever that turns out to be, a lame duck and anything but a strong steady administration, with an electorate mandate.

Not ALL the UK political parties are licking their wounds this morning, are they? No, but only one of them has truly come out of all this latest Election bloodbath smelling of roses, haven’t they? Yep, LABOUR!

• Overall 69 seats changed hands
• Labour have gained 29 seats so Jeremy Corbyn will remain leader
• The Tories have lost 12 seats and their overall majority (while nevertheless returning 13 MPs in Scotland that has rescued the party)

• The SNP have lost their powerful role in Scotland losing 21 of their previous 56 Westminster MP seats, including both their ex-leader Alex Salmond and deputy leader and Commons front man  Angus Robertson ousted by the Tories– Nicola Sturgeon can ditch her ‘dead in the water’ dream of another independence referendum

• The LibDems have gained 3 seats including Vince Cable gaining Twickenham, but ex-leader Nick Clegg bites the dust in Sheffield

• UKIP have ‘nil’ seats and its vote has collapsed – leader Paul Nuttall got his comeuppance and resigned

The exit poll at 10pm last night was disastrous news for the Conservatives, as it SHOCKINGLY indicated that they would NOT achieve an absolute majority (never mind a predicted “landslide”), and as the night rolled on matters didn’t improved for them as it did 2 years ago, though it turned against most others except Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour, didn’t it? This was against all expectations and predictions, wasn’t it? [All of us political observers have egg over our faces, don’t we?].

Now you may well think that Prime Minister Theresa May ought to have a scowl on her serious face today, as she has come through what proved to be a cruelly punishing campaign, and failed to win hands down, as widely expected and to credibly retain her frontline role. While her initial instinct might have been to resign, SHE doubtlessly will though smile through the tears and hang-on to power like grime death for the Tory party’s sake, so you can expect her to continue as a much ‘damaged’ head of government for another 5 years, can’t you?

However, that continuance also comes with a zero-prime ministerial ‘personal’ mandate from a General Election, as instead of the significant win in her own right that she sought, she has ended up instead with a bloody nose, eh? A hung parliament and a minority Tory government, provides her with little authority to now proceed unchallenged with her BREXIT plans, which was one of her STATED base reasons for calling a snap election, wasn’t it? Yep, she has substantially weakened her position and that is a massive blow to the majority of the electorate who voted for BREXIT, isn’t it?

Furthermore, it would seem that her and the Conservative’s survival in government, will come nevertheless at a great personal price to her reputation. The reason for that is that she has at the unexpectedly trenched her own image and popular standing in the Country when she had (unjustifiably?) acquired a widespread acceptance across the political spectrum as a strong fair reliable politician and leader. From being the most popularity with a rating of 55% [higher than Thatcher] she has plummeted down during the campaign to its lowest level 43%, as she became the party’s biggest liability [although Corbyn remains far behind her on 35% but up from 29%].

She made the biggest mistake that gets made in politics, in that she took the electorate for granted, and assumed that she could get away with blue murder, first by calling a snap election which she had repeatedly denied she would do, then weakness demonstrating that at the first sign of trouble she could be turned [indeed an unbelievable unprecedent u-turn on a published manifesto policy), and compounding this by withdrawing popular policies simply to give the next Government extra wriggle-room in public finances – understandable, but nevertheless personally damaging to her, when the public turned on her. Furthermore, she herself did not perform very well during the campaign (or do herself justice perhaps?), and has been badly advised in how best to run the election, don’t you think? She has never been the warmest of outgoing personalities and she certainly doesn’t compare favourably with smoothie David Cameron in that regard, does she?

Not many voters had the stomach for yet another election, and were probably suffering from election fatigue, don’t you think? Now, that might have been expected to show-up by poor turnout figures, however, all the indications so far are that it has been a high – as we will see later today when the full details are available, won’t we?

May has not only failed to successfully increased the Conservative majority in Parliament from a dangerously low 17 MPs, but she has simply lost even that small advantage. It is most likely that she will now have to come to some kind of arrangement with the Northern Ireland DUP, as a natural Conservative bed-fellow, particularly as that party is strongly in favour of BREXIT as well [but there will be a price to pay for their help, won’t there?].

Nevertheless, it hasn’t been the landslide that was widely predicted at the start of the campaign just some seven weeks ago, has it? No, this disastrous result compares badly with that of 2015 Cameron 16 absolute majority, especially when it was expected that it could be of the order of some past significant wins, wasn’t it? [`1955 Eden 60, 1959 Macmillan, 1983 & 1987 144 & 102, 1987 & 2007 Blair 179 & 167].

The problem that May and the Tories now face is that they didn’t, as she thought would happen (and many of us predicted?), “borrow” millions of votes from the normally ‘non-Conservative’ electorate, on the basis that she was the only one prepared and able to deliver the BREXIT that the people had demanded in the EU Referendum, and in failing to do so she has certainly critically damaged her own credibility, hasn’t she?

Nevertheless, Theresa May WILL form the next Government as the bottom line is that Labour have in fact LOST this bleeding  General Election (a fact that they desperately wish to hide?), and the numbers simply don’t add up to allow Jeremy Corbyn to cobble-together a coalition or minority government, do they?

[So much for the Theresa May’s offer of ‘Strong and Stable’ leadership, eh?]