Three links about last night, which encapsulate the evening:
1. The Guardian’s brief description of the election, which sounds amazingly similar to the 2016 US Election:
pic.twitter.com/i0EWiNz8Zl
— dcg1114 (@dcg1114) June 9, 2017
2. Worth remembering that the knives were out for Corbyn within the Labour Party before this election. If you know who these people are it may be more interesting, but several wanted the leadership of the Party for themselves:
Lovely compilation by @EL4JC of anti Corbyn Labour MPs and media pundits having to admit they were wrong
pic.twitter.com/nX0sN2tB5D— Hussain (@Chemzes) June 9, 2017
3. Finally, Marina Hyde in the Guardian, nails the pundit class’s inability to understand that elections are more volatile than they think.
It’s important to remember that the worst thing Theresa May had ever done before this was run through some wheat fields. So while she may have been on the Tory authorities’ radar at some point, there was nothing in her record to suggest she posed this level of security risk. Despite helming a campaign with more suspiciously unforced errors than the first round of a tennis grand slam, though, Prime Minister May has no intention of resigning. Is this a bit like when she had no intention of calling an election? Either way, I hope the BBC is already cutting a farewell montage of her best bits to Sting’s Fields of Gold. “We’ll remember her, when the West Wing blows, upon the fields of barley …” Or however it goes.
Elsewhere, and before the day is out, most of the political class are to be forcibly tattooed – choice of our foreheads or the arses we talk out of – with William Goldman’s famous dictum about Hollywood: Nobody knows anything. I mean, really. Really. With a few notable exceptions, there are uncontacted Amazon tribes with more of a clue – certainly ones that are less prone to collective failures of imagination. In fact, if you’d flown a plane over north-west Brazil last week, you might have spotted some rocks and pottery or whatnot arranged into a giant message reading: “You’re all going to drop a complete bollock with this youth turnout stuff”
…Received wisdom was that the Tory election machine was a crack special forces unit. So thanks for the laugh, Delta Farce! Crosby has masterminded a campaign akin to one of those Funniest Home Videos where someone attempts to light their own farts and ends up in hospital. They’re still the government, but they’ll never use the bathroom the same way again.”
