I remember people I know looking at the result in 2019 & saying that an 80 seat majority would ensure Tory rule for another decade at least. They were hideously depressed. I was too obviously, but at the same time I told them not to worry too much. They were judging things as if circumstances were normal. If they had been, they'd have been right.
But it was Boris ****ing Johnson, I said. Not just the least capable person to be PM but possibly the least capable multi celled life form. If anyone can **** that up, it'll be him. Just watch & wait.
Of course, even I didn't realise just how throughly he'd manage it. It should be literally impossible to fail to that level from that starting position.
& then...when it finally cost him his job, they actually managed to find someone even worse to take over. Mind blowing. A meltdown so epic in it's scope that finally settling on a PM so inept & devoid of ideas that he barely qualifies as a placeholder seemed like an upgrade.
I've been politically engaged since I was 14 & I've never known anything like the last decade. Before it started I'd have thought it was impossible. & as with so many things in history, when you look back & examine it, it was all completely needless.
Cameron only had to say to Farage in 2013 " Give it a rest Nigel. Don't let the door hit your arse on the way out " & that would have been it. No referendum, no Brexit. Europe remains a non issue in UK elections for another generation. Absolutely nobody outside a handful of the Tory right even bother to mention it.
Cameron wins in 2015 regardless ( Labour couldn't have won a raffle under Ed Milliband ) By 2019 the Tories are led by George Osborne trying to justify nearly a decade of austerity policies that he himself masterminded as chancellor. Up against a Labour party led by either the other Milliband, or Andy Burnham.
Europe isn't mentioned once by any candidate or any voter. Or if it is, only in passing, in reference to something else.
Who wins? Difficult to say. But either way, Covid still hits in 2020. If the Tories have won the path would have been similar but the profiteering would have been a lot less brazen & there probably wouldn't have been a Partygate equivalent. Under Labour the provisions made would have been more or less similar to what we lived through. Minor differences.
Either way, tomorrow the Tories (if still there) would be facing judgement on those same austerity policies, now 14 years in, on the back of a cost of living crisis that has crippled the economy & ruined lives. They'd be every bit as ****ed as they now are.
A Labour government in power since 2019 would survive with a reduced majority as people recognised the unique circumstances. Dave or Andy would be about to start a second term.
Boris Johnson would be blustering & honking like a bad P G Wodehouse parody on the after dinner circuit at £10K a pop & occasionally turn up on a panel show. Remembered by most only as a vaguely ridiculous mayor of London.
Nobody knows who Liz Truss is. Not even her election agent.
Rishi Sunak is a junior minister at the treasury (or shadow) Jacob Rees-Mogg is still a " ****ing hell is that a real actual person alive today ? " item run at the end of Newsnight in a slow news week.
Jeremy Corbyn is about to stand as an MP for the final time before retirement after being honoured by the party for long service. Only people my age know his name.
& Farage ? Still a Euro MP. Earning a massive wedge for doing precisely ****ing nothing & happy as a pig in shite.
There's the alternative history of the UK over the past decade.
Pretty bog standard apart from Covid.
When historians sit down to write the genuine history, they're going to be worried that future generations will assume it's a parody & will feel the need to subtitle it :
" No, honest...this ACTUALLY HAPPENED !! "
f shit.
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