Wednesday 14 June 2017

The Tories are reckless gamblers


The Tory party have now thrown the UK into chaos twice in a year, yet millions still somehow believe that they're competent and trustworthy despite the undeniable evidence that they're not.

David Cameron's Brexit gamble backfired spectacularly. He decided to offer the EU referendum during the 2015 General Election campaign in order to poach UKIP votes. In the short-term it worked very well indeed because Cameron won an unexpected parliamentary majority and all of his main political rivals (Ed Miliband, Nick Clegg, Nigel Farage) resigned withing hours.

The problem of course was that he had no Lib-Dem bullet shield as an excuse for not calling the EU referendum, so he had to do it, and as we all know he lost his gamble badly after robotically repeating the same passionless arguments in favour of Remain for the whole referendum debate.

During the EU referendum campaign Theresa May played her cards brilliantly. She worked out that the best course of action in regards to her own self-interest (all she ever cared about) would be to pay lip service to Remain with a very quiet non-campaign so that she could keep the high office of state she was in (Home Secretary), then she'd be in prime position to take over leadership of the party whichever way the result went. If Remain won she could simply stay at the Home Office until Cameron's retirement as leader, and if Leave won she could position herself as the experienced stability candidate in the ensuing leadership contest.

The way she put her self-interest above the good of the nation should have been a dire warning of what was to come, but for her first 10 months as Prime Minister she got an extraordinarily easy ride from the mainstream media and shortly before she went back on her "no snap elections" promises she had approval ratings better than Margaret Thatcher ever achieved in her pomp!

Theresa May's vanity election was another huge gamble. It was a lot less risky that David Cameron's because she had a huge poll lead (50% -25%) and she knew she had the intensely biased mainstream media on her side, but it was obviously a completely unnecessary gamble because she could have held onto political power until 2020.

May didn't need to gamble at all while Cameron had backed himself into a corner over holding the EU referendum.


Whatever happens to Theresa May from now on, her political story will always be remembered as a modern day morality tale about the danger of vanity. She was such an arrogant narcissist that she assumed that she could win an election by hiding from the public, cobbling together an absolute joke of a manifesto, and lazily relying on her attack dogs in the propaganda rags to destroy her opponent's reputation.

It didn't work out that way and now Theresa May is hanging on to political power by a thread. She's so desperate to retain her grip on power that she's now trying to cobble together a coalition with the most extreme political party in Westminster.

The really big problem with the DUP isn't that they're a bunch of terrorist-backed religious bigots, the problem is that they represent one side of the conflict in Northern Ireland, which means that the UK government would be throwing away any claims of impartiality in the peace process if they invite one side of the conflict into government.

David Cameron was a reckless gambler and there's no doubt whatever that he'll be principally remembered for his failed Brexit gamble. but Theresa May is clearly worse. Not only has she thrown three years worth of Tory majority government onto her bonfire of vanity, she's now on the verge of lobbing peace in Northern Ireland into the flames too.

Anyone who would risk bringing back the bombings, killings ans social trauma of the troubles just to save their own political skin isn't just a reckless gambler like David Cameron, they're an uterly depraved self-server who actually puts their own political self-interest above the actual lives of other people.

If Theresa May's deal with the DUP goes ahead then it will be absolute proof that she's such a reckless gambler that she'll gladly risk people dying in terrorist atrocities in order to serve her own personal self-interest.

There's absolutely no way that such reckless self-serving opportunism can be seen as anything but working against the national interest.


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