Wednesday 13th December
(This is NOT 2066 – reread the title of this piece please)
Ah, what a year it was and what an election. The botched referendum campaign of four years ago had really torn the Tory party apart. It was such a close run thing too with less than 30,000 votes eventually securing Cameron a feeble victory, but as Scotland and Wales voted overwhelmingly to stay in there was actually a small majority in England for leaving. Teresa May resigned as Home Secretary and Cameron clung on but eventually left a year later, a broken man….every political career ends in defeat.
As you know it was Boris who, flying in on an offer of a new referendum in five years time, secured the Leadership of the Tory Party, but half the Cabinet resigned and wouldn’t serve under him and chaos ensued, the Tory Party almost splitting. The Tories had earlier passed the Fixed Term Parliament Act so we had to wait until 2020 for an election. By now the SNP had declared their own (technically illegal) second independence referendum and won it. They had effectively declared UDI and Boris was helpless to stop it. Labour had, as you know split in 2017 with over half their M.P.s forming a new REFORM party of the centre left but most of these lost their seats three years later. The 2020 election was chaos, with the Tories winning just under 280 of the now reduced 600 seats, but so divided that they could barely agree on anything. Old Labour (still under Jeremy Corbyn) won nearly 200 seats, the SNP won all 45 Scottish seats and a rejuvenated Lib-Dem party got nearly 30 seats. A lot of Independent M.P.s were elected and the Tories formed a Minority Government which has slowly begun to undo many of the more contentious issues passed in the previous 10 years. The Deficit is still nearly 100 billion a year and nobody even pretends it can ever be reduced completely.
We are in effect now running an unofficial Coalition whose membership shifts and changes as each new Measure comes before Parliament; a Government of Disunity if ever there was one. And, as per Boris’s promise we are all set for yet another referendum in two years time which, according to the Opinion Polls, looks increasingly like Brexit. And five years ago we all thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse….