Beware the polls of June. They may tell a deceptive tale
So here we are again. Another year, another election, another round of strong and stable sound bites interspersed with the creative, free-range lingo of Boris Johnson. Groundhog Day on the campaign trail – and it isn’t even lunchtime.
The result, it is generally assumed, is a foregone conclusion. If so, the Tories should make the most of their time in the sun. For even the stoutest electoral hegemony is no match for history’s tidal surge.
Back in 1992 – in the days before mutton-headed mugwumps roamed freely on the earth – the Conservatives were likewise in seemingly permanent credit with the voters. Recently the BBC repeated its coverage of that year’s election: a guilty pleasure which I devoured in nightly instalments, curtains drawn against voyeurs and policemen. Save your pity. Summer is upon us and I plan to get out a lot more.
The coverage was a hoot: a feast of flawed prediction and misplaced glee and gloom, all seen through the smug, unforgiving lens of hindsight. Labour, previously thought to have recovered from its 1980s travails, was suddenly pronounced all but dead. If it couldn’t win now, mused the pundits, with recession biting and the Tories about as popular as shingles, when exactly could it?
Ken Livingstone came on, taking a well-earned break from his PhD in Alternative Semitic Studies, in a bid to keep the Red Flag flying. And who was that alongside him? Yes, it was a young Jeremy Corbyn, furnished with a neat explanation for Labour’s plight. It wasn’t the party’s penchant for taxing everything from toenails to tomatoes – it was just the fact that it had never clearly explained that it was planning to build fewer bombs.
Dennis Skinner – the ‘Beast of Bolsover’ – had a different target: the chattering, PR-loving classes at the BBC, of whom David Dimbleby, his unfortunate interrogator, was apparently Exhibit A.
“Now look, I’ve come all the way from Leeds in heavy traffic and I don’t need any lectures from you, or Doctor Death [David Owen], or Paddy Backdown [Ashdown] or Woy of the Wadicals [Roy Jenkins] about the voting system,” he raged.
Down in the West Country, meanwhile, another reporter was getting a seriously hard time from a group of disenchanted Lib Dems. It was like trying to control the Blackboard Jungle.
“Who wants an alliance with Labour?” she bellowed above the din of a class whose sole desire was to flick ink at nasty Tories. Not that the Tories much cared. For them, the manicured lawns of power and prosperity now stretched to the far horizon.
And then Britain crashed out of the ERM, trashing the Tory reputation for economic competence, and five years later Labour swept into power under the über cool high priesthood of Tony Blair.
Right now life looks good for Theresa May. But as she sits on her sofa, clicking her kitten heels while Philip puts out the bins, she should recall that the future is not a tame lion. Treat it with respect, Prime Minister. It has a way of making mugwumps of us all.
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