Not many of us saw that result coming. My mother, now in her eighties, with years of political experience, swears she did. Hindsight I think. I know I didn't and nor did many public commentators. Now I am unsure what to think about where we have ended up after the general election with the chance of yet another sooner rather than later hanging over our heads. The prime minister still looks shell-shocked. The queen's speech on June 21 said nothing much at all. At most, it announced a holding pattern where some of the most unpopular Conservative policies from the manifesto have been quietly shelved. Brexit has now become safer territory than anything else on the basis of last year's mandate for our European departure, with no real mandate for anything at all for this barely surviving new Conservative government.
The leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, is clamouring for a stab at leadership of the country on the back of Theresa May's disastrous election campaign and result. His old-style left-wing politics and leadership are no better or worse than they were before it all began, but his star has risen and he has gained the stature of a popular winner. Not that he did actually win, but May did so badly compared with any pre- or even mid-election expectations that he can afford to crow a little, if not to make extravagant claims as to Labour's mandate to govern. We have to hope that he never gets the unfettered chance to show us what he can do as our leader or rather what, we expect, he can't. However popular with young idealists, I don't think a good, old-fashioned, domestic squeeze-the-rich policy is going to do us a great deal of good or balance the books at this stage of our evolution. It might make the young, poor and jobless feel better but it won't produce the cash to resolve the problems of our health and education systems and the rich themselves will move on if things get too uncomfortable. The squeezed middle would be squeezed harder.
The terrible fire of Grenfell Tower on June 14, with numbers of dead unconfirmed at about 80, has brought divisions between the rich and poor in one particularly wealthy area of London into tragic focus. The fire might just as well have happened in a poor area where tower blocks were not surrounded by some of the highest valued real estate in the country, but it did not. Corbyn, not, one suspects, a naturally touchy feely person, has been seen as the leader who got down to the scene of the disaster to bestow hugs on those affected and to understand the feelings of the suffering and bereaved. May - one imagines at least as concerned but unable to show her humanity - has appeared as the face and figure of the bureaucracy, one step removed from real people and just not caring enough.
The mask was on - the distancing from real life that she insisted on during an election campaign when she refused to engage face-to-face with the hurly-burly of popular politics. She has seemed a remote and chilly figure through this tragedy just as she was during the horrors of the terrorist attacks in Manchester and London in recent weeks, and as she repeated her small stock of mantras on election platforms in automaton mode. These days, politicians are expected to share their people's pain visibly. As things have gone from bad to dismal over the past few weeks of terrible events, May has seemed increasingly absent as a real human being and Corbyn has appeared in the image of the true man of the people.
I was terrified of a rampant Conservative Party with an unassailable majority in Parliament, able to push through hard Brexit and run roughshod over any dissent with no viable Opposition in Parliament to give it a voice. Now, so far as Brexit goes, there may be a glimmer of hope for a gentler, better deal that will allow us a warmer working relationship with our European friends. We still have hard-line David Davis as our chief negotiator, but he is no longer in a position to follow through with his perfect vision of separation. Whatever happens, uncertainty may well kill us in the meantime. Unrest and disaster at home, a government dependent on an alliance with a party of traditionally hard-line and highly conservative Irish Protestants - a party from that rare place in Britain where Christian religious affiliations remain at the front of political life. A dislocated part of this United Kingdom that has its own traditional and ongoing problems related to those divides always waiting in the shadows. As negotiations with the Irish continue, and with the queen's speech to be debated, the prime minister's foothold at 10, Downing Street has not got any stronger. For now her own party has decided to give her its support; the country cannot stand more uncertainty as to the leadership of its government and its governing party but neither will do more than limp along and the people and the press will continue to throw wounding brickbats.
Theresa May is hardly likely to lead the Conservatives into another general election that we can only imagine will come sooner rather than later, regardless of the exhaustion of the electorate and the terrible uncertainty that damages the country so badly. Who challenges her for party leadership and when remain to be seen. There is hope in the figure of the chancellor, Philip Hammond, for an anti-Brexit leader. Remainers now outnumber Leavers in the cabinet but Boris and who knows who else huff and puff in the wings and none of us knows any longer what the Conservative Party as a whole thinks it wants. There are plenty who were and are in favour of the Hard Brexit line. The European leaders, the newly elected president, Emmanuel Macron, in France and Angela Merkel in Germany at their head, meanwhile offer the hand of friendship. We need all the friends we can get and thank goodness Donald Trump has realized that the English public may not see him in that role and has cancelled his state visit later this year. How our longer term relationship with the United States of America is affected is probably not worth worrying about while we have concerns nearer home that will affect our role and standing in the rest of the world.
What of other leaders after this election? Of the cabal of Scottish women, Nicola Sturgeon for the Nationalists is still First Minister, although the Scottish National Party suffered huge losses after their 2015 landslide, including the seats of the former SNP leader, Alex Salmond, and the deputy SNP leader, Angus Robertson. That should put a stop to a second Scottish independence referendum for a while. Kezia Dugdale and Scottish Labour won back six seats previously lost to the SNP on top of one regain. The laurel leaves, however, for the best election campaign throughout the country went to remarkable Ruth Davidson for reviving a Conservative Party in Scotland that had seemed on the brink of extinction to win 12 seats and regain one. Unsurprisingly, there are rumours of a call for Davidson to national leadership, although she maintains her determination to stay in Scotland. Tim Farron has announced the end of his leadership of the Liberal Party on grounds of poor results and an all too apparent clash of his religious beliefs with political leadership. Popular Vince Cable, previously a minister in the coalition government and returned to Parliament after going out in 2015, has thrown his hat into that ring. The United Kingdom Independence Party leader, Paul Nuttall, and hopefully his horrid party are dead and buried.
While May has shown herself unable to emote sufficiently in the face of human tragedy to suit the present zeitgeist, our constitutional head of state, the queen, who has never emoted publicly, has, by simply turning up and being there in the aftermath of disaster, taken her place at the centre of national events and national mourning. Other members of the royal family have been there too and done their bit, but all eyes have been on a little old lady who only has to arrive, smile and shake hands to make people in the midst of pain and catastrophe feel better. The Royal Touch indeed and a national figurehead of which we are sorely in need. I was at the Ascot races this week, watching the royal carriage procession progress down the racecourse to the entrance to the royal box as the crowds, booted, suited and be-hatted in their best, stood and cheered. Who would have thought it possible in the 21st century?
