LIVE24SEVEN // Business THOUGHT S FOR JULY 2 0 1 7 Digby Lord
To steal from Wellington's victory speech after the Battle of Waterloo just over 200 years ago: "…'twas a damn close-run thing".
Following the 9th June 2017 General Election, our country came within a whisker of being controlled by a bunch of terrorist- sympathising, anti-business Marxists.
Thank God (certainly not the Prime Minister!) that not everyone in those marginal constituencies fell for the "All shall have prizes" siren, tempting rhetoric of the Corbynistas. You know the spiel… "It'll all be paid for by asking the wealthy and the country's businesses to pay a little bit more." Well, if the Marxists had indeed got their mitts in the cookie jar, this Monday morning, just 84 hours after the polls closed, I would be observing the first death throes of the UK Economy, just stripped naked and disarmed in the vicious fight for competitiveness in the global economy. If just 2,000 votes over a mere seven seats (out of 650) had gone the other way, the fifth biggest economy on the planet would have been hijacked by a few militants who had taken control of a mainstream brand and seized power.
Jones
A coup by any other name, from which there would probably have been no return, certainly not in the short-term and not until irreparable harm had been done.
But they lost. I know the gloating is theirs; the "high ground" is being claimed by Corbyn, McConnell and Thornberry, but we really should not be tolerating victory toasts from a party that is 56 seats (yes, 56, not 5 or 6) behind the government total.
First up, I owe you all an apology. I predicted an overall Tory majority of 58; far less than the landslide many predicted, but obviously far more than the result. How did I get it so wrong?
1. I was considerably influenced by so many opinion polls, for so long, consistently giving the Tories leads of over 20%.
2. I did not expect the Conservative manifesto to have been prepared only by a small coterie of advisors who, out of the blue, with little or no consultation, suddenly announced that the next Tory government would effectively take away from their core vote the one material thing cherished above anything else – the property-based inheritance coming down the pipe from Mum and Dad. Of course something has to be done about the impossible call on future taxpayers to pay for the social care (and healthcare and pensions for that matter) of a getting older population and something in the manifesto about setting up a Task Force to come up with ideas after taking the views of all vested interests would have been the hallmark of responsible government, but to hit the very vote you can rely on three weeks before an
Election...and then publicly change your mind (!!)
...smacks of the arrogant complacency that it clearly was. "Put it in the manifesto and then the Lords can't overrule the ensuing
legislation...and of course they'll all still vote for us, they've nowhere else to go, look at who we're up against!" Ah yes, just how the voters of Kensington and Warwick
behaved...not!
3. I did not expect the most ruthless, historically successful, well-funded, election-winning machine in global democratic politics to behave in such a lacklustre, negative way during the campaign. In sport, personal relationships, business and politics complacency is a dreadful disease. If you think that all you have to do to succeed is turn up, then you will usually get turned over…and properly turned over the Tories were. The public, now fully integrated into the world of the instant gratification and the Coliseum blood sport of reality TV, expect a TV debate where politicians can be seen to squirm as ordinary people can be as rude as they like, cheered on by a partisan, blood-seeking crowd. Debate it is not, but a necessary ritual in the electoral process it surely is and Mrs May ignored it at considerable cost. The electorate felt taken for granted, insulted even, that an unnecessary election had been called for apparently personal reasons and then nanny was telling the children that she knew best. They queued up to give nanny a kicking.
4. I did not expect such a well-run, professional campaign from the Socialists. Someone gave Corbyn a makeover. Beard trimmed, he was shorn of the seventies, proletarian, Leninist uniform, even venturing out of the hard-left fortress of Islington, Jezza went for it big-time
...and very nearly pulled it off.
5. Together with many others, I misread the destination of the disenchanted UKIP vote. I assumed it would go (back, in many cases) to the Tories, but the populism of the extreme in Trump's America, the anti-establishment elite sentiment of Brexit, the thirst for someone to lead from the outside that put Macron into the Elysée, the wish to give a complacent incumbent a kicking that finished Renzi in
Italy...all pushed the UKIP vote (and many others) to Corbyn.
Forget who picks up the bill; turn a blind eye to his commitment to disarmament; to his sympathising for terrorists; to the tolerance of Labour anti-semitism; to his on-going flirtation with Marxism.
Labour MPs who campaigned on a "Jeremy won't be PM; you can vote for me" slogan and didn't want the hard-leftie anywhere near their constituency will now be saying how marvellous he is. Yes, the coup's aftermath of the work of the nasty (bricks through the windows of and foul social media attacks
/ 60
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132 |
Page 133 |
Page 134 |
Page 135 |
Page 136 |
Page 137 |
Page 138 |
Page 139 |
Page 140 |
Page 141 |
Page 142 |
Page 143 |
Page 144 |
Page 145 |
Page 146 |
Page 147 |
Page 148
