June 08, 2017

Horse 2284 - Election 2017: The Predictioning

When the earth turns a little bit further today, Britons will be going to their local polling station to begrudgingly fulfill their democratic right to put an X in a box and be ignored by whoever becomes their local MP for five years. This is an election which has been called when nobody needs an election, to reset the parliamentary clock, following a referendum which should have never have happened, over an issue which the majority of people who voted in favour of, don't have to beat the consequences. This is been given an added bonus twist with a sitting Prime Minister who refused to take part in any debates, following a fortnight of mayhem and destruction which might not have ever have happened if the police hadn't had their funding cut under her term as Home Secretary, and with an Opposition Leader who until the point of becoming head of the Shadow Cabinet, had never held a Cabinet or Shadow Cabinet position.
The amount of mental gymnastics required to think through all of this would probably get you a spot on Team GB for the Tokyo Olympics of 2020. The people who sell Snickers bars and fruit cakes, are all applying to the Department Of Health to get their goods reclassified because their products aren't as nutty as all of this and their worried about potential breaches under the Trade Descriptions Act.

At the end of the 2017 Festival Of Democracy, the BBC will once again wheel out a freshly defrosted Dimbleby and the inevitable parade of political hopefuls and practical jokers (sometimes it's honestly difficult to tell who's who) before everyone makes the painfully slow count towards 326.
Pitted head to head to be the next occupant of Number Ten Downing Street are two people who look like supply teachers for an English literature class and conveniently they both got their respective jobs following the tantrums and mic drop from their predecessors. Teresa May replaced David Cameron who pulled the trigger on the Brexit gun and then didn't want to help clean up the mess after the collective heads of the Great British public exploded; presumably he is currently ensconced in Castle Doom with an adequate supply of the tears of poor people and the young, distilled in oak for 2 years. Likewise​ Jeremy Corbyn got his job after being redder than Red Ed Miliband, after Ed sort of wandered off and was last seen talking to a sheep in a field outside of Kettering.

Policy wise, Teresa May hasn't really had anything outside of repeating "strong and stable leadership" over and over until the former operators of numbers stations on the dismal side of the Iron Curtain started wondering if there's some sort of hidden message that should be decrypted. Jeremy Corbyn on​ the other hand has been labelled by The Sun, The Times, The Grauniad, and The Daily Mail as the spawn of Trotsky, Lenin and Stalin all combined and wanting to nationalise everything and take Britain back to the 1970s: notwithstanding the fact that during the 1970s, the Post Office and British Rail actually did work properly and the various electricity companies were still owned by Britain instead of the biggest electricity provider in the UK being Électricité de France (De? Des? I don't know. I think that it's nonsensical that electricity is either a girl or a boy).

At any rate, trying to predict this horrorshow has been like trying to apply well formed logic on a brick. The brick won't understand and will probably end up asleep (have you ever seen an awake brick?). Following the polls as we learned in 2016 with the Festival Of Democracy in the United States which gave the world an angry satsuma as a President, is a pointless exercise. Nevertheless I have applied the latest results from YouGov into a swing calculator and determined the following results which are as reliable as an angry satsuma as a President.

Con 331 (outright win)
Lab 233
SNP 56
Lib Dem 8
P Cymru 3
UKIP 1
Green 1
DUP 8
Sinn Fein 4
UUP 2
SDLP 3

Normally I would have said that unless something extraordinary happens between now and when the polls close but given that not everyone even two terrorist attacks in the space of a fortnight did much to shift polling intentions, then the Tories will be returned to power and Ms May will again be greeted by Larry and Freya, the two Mousers Of The Cabinet Office, at Number Ten. Sensibly they will be oblivious to the fuss and will continue to ignore the progress of democracy, as all cats do. Instead they will wonder where their​ dinner is and​ go back to the important cat business of having a nap.... which is what everyone should have done in the first place.

Book now for Election 2022 when a digitally accurate version of Benjamin Disraeli will be loaded into a Siemens Democutron 9000 cyborg and will be pitted against the reanimated James Callaghan who has been cryogenically frozen and held in the Post Office Tower since 1979, to become the next next Prime Minister; now you know why it was deemed not to exist under the Official Public Secrets Act. Or better yet, don't. I have access to time travel and I can tell you that the European Champions League Final between AFC Wimbledon and Real Madrid at the San Siro is an absolute corker of a match.

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