Trying to make sense of it all.

The media says that Labour will increase taxes and their sums don’t add up in the manifesto. Conservatives are the country’s only hope as they are the one’s with a charismatic leader who can ‘see us all through’. The BBC and Sky have never offered the current Labour Leader a platform for his policies, anyway.

Here are my thoughts…

I was a ‘Leaver’ in the Brexit referendum and remain so, despite the whole of the country trying to tell us that we made a mistake and in a second referendum ‘we will all change our minds’. For this reason, I was well impressed with Theresa May’s approach to getting the deal done and continuing with her agenda to get us out of that blood-sucking bureaucracy that is the EU. She managed to negotiate the hurdles laid in the path by a certain Gina Miller and many of her own MPs. She was doing a splendid job with her stern and focussed approach to Brexit. Somewhere along the way she got greedy for Power and she thought that on the back of her Brexit handling popularity and Corbyn’s struggles within his own party, she can snatch herself a full 5 year term in Office as the PM. Theresa May decided to call a snap election and caught the country unawares. She miscalculated the nation’s mood.

Jeremy Corbyn has always had some very good policies and has consistently been growing his supporter numbers since he won over the party’s leadership. JC is also a far better campaigner (with 30 years of experience) and a better orator than May. He has used the digital marketing channels and Social Media to its fullest to get his message across. This has worked beautifully for the Labour party in turning around a very difficult situation to now being with single digit points behind the Conservative party, according to some polls. Could this end up being the biggest upset in British Political history? Could ‘Europe’ prove to have taken another Tory scalp within 2 years (Cameron and now May)?

Did May get too greedy and eyed a full term as the PM, not being satisfied with what she had in the bag? Did she forget the age old saying – a bird in hand is better than 2 in the bush?

Going on to the policies, it is a mixed bag. The Conservatives have become unpopular because of the continued austerity policies while offering tax breaks to the super rich. They have even alienated their own support base of small businesses and small scale entrepreneurs with heavy taxation, while creating wider paths for the super rich to grow their businesses and empires. This has also been seen in many circles as creating opportunities for the larger corporations to usurp many small businesses by making them less viable and forcing many to give up their dreams of ‘becoming their own bosses’. The cuts forced by the austerity measures have impacted on the security agencies in the country and also the much loved and abused NHS. The austerity measures combined with the Tory greed to asset strip the NHS and sell it off to big corporates to run as a profitable business has not gone down very well with the masses, who have finally woken up to fact that NHS may not be around in its current form for much longer, if left with the Tories. NHS just needs better management of resources and accountability measures imposed on all its suppliers and service providers, along with similar approach to all other public services. Such a move needs more resources which will also prevent the loss of many great national institutions. Additionally, in principle, the Tory policy to reduce the Social Welfare bill by making it to be a safety net and not a ‘lifestyle choice’ sounded laudable, but the implementation and execution was devoid of any compassion and intelligence in its procedural outlook. Apart from this one policy and the stern Brexit negotiations, May had nothing going for her in my opinion, but she felt emboldened by the internal feuds within the Labour party and thought that she saw an opportunity to seize a full term for her. What a folly! Labour’s policy to bring back Housing related welfare benefits to 18 year olds sounds like a bad move and bringing people back to the bad old days of feeling ‘entitled’ to the benefits with limited sources for the state to fund them. I also hope that they will have sensible policies to distinguish those creating wealth and making contributions to society from those who build businesses purely for greed and through exploitation (zero hours, low wages, poor employment laws come to mind). As is well known, you cannot tax the nation’s rich to bring about general prosperity. Those who work hard and put their neck on the line to create wealth and businesses should also have incentives to do so. Most other policies on their manifesto are very welcome and have been well received by the masses, if they can be funded with sensible resource allocation. I feel that JC and chancellor JM will have a pragmatic approach to bringing this about.

I predict a very close election, which might just nudge out the Conservatives with a Labour/X coalition. The negotiations with X may not be easy and hopefully will not have an impact on delivery of the Labour manifesto. Labour MPs would also be very foolish to continue with their attempts to depose JC from the leadership on any pretext as people power will rise to defend him as JC is the only leader who could have brought the Labour party so close to victory from the cesspit they were in only 2 months ago.

Who will be the British PM on June 9th, 2017?