The Trojan Horse

Monday 15th May

Everyone knows the story of the Trojan horse; the gift of the giant horse which turned out to be full of soldiers.  Well, it may or not have actually been quite like that, but we have just had the twenty-first Century version of the Trojan Horse.

UKIP came almost from nowhere, but were backed by a few millionaires and steadily their anti-Europe and anti-immigrant message seeped into the nation’s consciousness.  And it was classic scape-goating; blaming immigrants for many of our woes, which were really home-grown.  And it appeared around seven or eight years ago that theTories were really rattled.  UKIP started off winning seats in the European Parliamentary elections.  Barely understood by anyone, the European Parliament was seen as an expensive talking shop and people had often used their votes as a protest – a few years ago the Greens won a few seats.  But now it was UKIP winning and then doing everything they could to sabotage it when they got elected.  And then when they started winning local council seats and it looked as if they might actually steal a few Tory seats at the General Election of 2015, Cameron blinked and promised a referendum.  But he thought it was a safe bet, he had already (narrowly) beaten the SNP in the Scottish Referendum and the polls were decidedly in Remains’ favour.  But as we all know it didn’t turn out that way.  Brexit won, though even more narrowly, and suddenly UKIP, though triumphant were really not needed anymore.  The coup had succeeded.  And guess what?  It was a Tory coup all along, or a coup by the right-wing of the Tory Party.  A real Trojan Horse.  The tragedy is that slowly quite a lot of Labour voters, especially in the Midlands and the North had switched to UKIP.  Quite why I am not sure.  I really don’t want to think it was simply the anti-immigrant dog-whistle politics of Farage and co.   And the feeling was that Labour were out of touch with ordinary working people.

Now we have the snap election and it looks as if, despite almost all of the policies Labour is espousing proving popular, people are still not convinced.  It may be Corbyn, or the Media’s representation of him, but I think it is deeper than that.  If the opinion polls are anything like correct Labour will get around the same percentage of votes as two years ago, but UKIP has collapsed.  And maybe because of Brexit, which Theresa May has embraced so fervently, most of those who voted UKIP last time are going over to the Tories.

Ironically what was seen as a threat to the Tories may end up costing Labour very dearly.  But perhaps that was the intention all along.  I sincerely hope it won’t happen, but even though there are still four weeks to go I don’t think Labour will do much better this time around, and because of the first past the post system Mrs. May may well get her large majority.

Personally I think it will be a huge poisoned chalice and the public’s mood may be quite different post-Brexit.  But I am also afraid what damage a large majority might inflict on ordinary people’s lives, many of whom will in a Jingo-istic spirit have voted for the Tories as the party to deliver Brexit.